OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS
NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES
GRANT AWARDS AND OFFERS, DECEMBER 2015
ALABAMA (5) $144,000
Mobile
Historic Mobile Preservation Society Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Melanie Thornton
Project Title: General Collections Assessment at the Historic Mobile Preservation Society
Project Description: A general conservation assessment of the collections housed in the
Historic Oakleigh House, a circa 1833 Greek Revival house museum, and the archival
collection housed in the Minnie Mitchell Archives building, constructed in 1980. Two
conservators, one specializing in furniture and woodwork and the other in paper-based
collections, would review the museum's holdings and provide the organization a first
assessment with which to plan for future preservation. Highlights of the collection
include a Thomas Sully portrait of Madame Octavia LeVert, a portrait of actor Edwin
Booth, and several personal items of James C. Calhoun, including his ink well and hair
bracelet. The artifacts and archives support interpretive programs on the antebellum
South for 4,000 visitors annually, as well as for students of public history, art history,
and material culture at the University of Southern Alabama, Springhill College, and the
University of Mobile.
Montgomery
Bertis English Outright: $25,200
[Awards for Faculty]
Alabama State University
Project Title: Civil Wars and Civil Beings: Societal Construction, Reconstruction, and
Post-Reconstruction in Perry County, Alabama, 1860-75
Project Description: Writing and research toward the publication of a book about racial
cooperation in Reconstruction-era Perry County, Alabama.
Deborah Solomon Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Auburn University at Montgomery
Project Title: The Poem and the Garden: Rival Media in Early Modern England
Project Description: A book-length study of the relationships between poetic craft and
garden design in 16th- and 17th-century England.
Troy
Troy State University Main Campus Outright: $12,000
[Common Heritage]
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Director: Martin Olliff
Project Title: Wiregrass Common Heritage Project
Project Description: Digitization of materials about the Wiregrass region, which spans
southeast Alabama, southwest Georgia, and northwest Florida, and public programs
including a workshop on African American genealogical sources in Alabama. The
applicant would partner with the Dothan Landmarks Foundation and Houston-Love
Memorial Library to host two community scanning days, post digitized items to the
Alabama Mosaic repository, provide public programming intended to engage residents of
this region, and commemorate the history of the region, named for the tough grass that
fed cattle. While preserving the history of this under-documented region, the project
would also provide community training in recording and capturing community archives.
Tuscaloosa
Donald Fader Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Alabama School of Music
Project Title: Italian Music in Louis XIV’s France: The Goûts-réunis, Noble Patronage
Networks, and the Roots of the Musical Enlightenment
Project Description: Preparation of a book on French music and patronage networks
during the late reign of King Louis XIV (ca. 1685-1715).
ALASKA (1) $6,000
Barrow
North Slope Borough Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Kathy Ahgeak
Project Title: Preservation of Oil Paintings at the Inupiat Heritage Center Museum
Project Description: Hiring a paintings conservator to undertake an item-level
conservation assessment of seven paintings that document lifeways and history of the
native peoples of the North Slope Borough (the northernmost coast of Alaska). The oil
paintings, housed at the Inupiat Heritage Center Museum, depict unique Inupiat cultural
traditions and community leaders, with one painting, "Hunters of the North" (Lunda
Hoyle Gill, 1983), showing whaling practices, traditional clothing, weapons, and boat
construction. The consultant would also offer a workshop to staff on preventive
conservation. The museum collections are viewed by school groups and tourists and are
used by community members for genealogical research. The museum is engaged in an
active program of recording oral histories that help illuminate the physical collections for
a richer documentation of Inupiaq history, language, and culture.
ARIZONA (5) $660,643
Phoenix
City of Phoenix Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Edward Lebow
Project Title: Preservation Assessment of the Phoenix Municipal Art Collection
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: The preservation assessment of a collection of approximately 1,000
art objects, the majority of which are paper-based, such as photographs, prints, and
drawings. The collection also includes paintings, sculpture, ceramics, textiles, baskets,
and mixed media. These items are presently displayed in municipal buildings as well as
in a volunteer-staffed gallery space in City Hall. In addition to assessing the city's art
collections, the NEH-funded consultant would also provide a workshop to train city staff,
volunteers, and students who manage the collection, and advise on the purchase of data
loggers for environmental monitoring.
Tempe
Michael Tueller Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Arizona State University
Project Title: New Edition and Translation of Greek Epigrammatic Poetry
Project Description: The completion of volume 3 of the Loeb Classical Library series of
the Greek Anthology, a critical edition and translation of ancient Greek epigrammatic
poetry.
Tucson
Pima County Community College District Outright: $100,000
[Humanities Initiatives: HSIs]
Project Director: Brian Stewart
Project Title: Border Culture in the Classroom and the Public Square
Project Description: An eighteen-month interdisciplinary project on border culture for
faculty, students, and community, incorporating curriculum development, enhancement
of writing skills, and a public dialog program.
University of Arizona Outright: $4,243
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Wendy Burk
Project Title: Purchase of Preservation Supplies and Environmental Monitoring
Equipment
Project Description: The purchase of preservation supplies and environmental
monitoring equipment for the center's extensive collection of contemporary poetry,
photographs, broadsides and recordings. Included in the collection are 45,000 volumes
of poetry, 25,000 periodicals, 4,000 photographs, 400 broadsides, and 1,500 unique
recordings. The collection, which is particularly comprehensive in the field of
contemporary English-language poetry, is fully accessible and heavily used for scholarly
and pedagogical purposes in the university. The University of Arizona Poetry Center's
collections also serve a broad spectrum of writers, readers, and researchers, including
members of the local community and scholars from around the world.
University of Arizona Match: $500,000
[Challenge Grants]
Project Director: Jack Mutchler
Project Title: La Busqueda, “The Search”
Project Description: Renovation of a donated property as home for La Búsqueda
(The Search), a Southwest focused humanities institute, as well as an endowment for
its activities.
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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ARKANSAS (2) $56,400
Fort Smith
Fort Smith Museum of History Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Connie Manning
Project Title: Mitigating and Monitoring Light Levels in the Fort Smith Museum of
History
Project Description: The installation of UV and light filtering solar shades in the
museum's first floor galleries and purchase of a UV and visible-light meter to monitor
light levels in the museum, as well as at neighboring cultural heritage institutions.
Collection items include vehicles, such as a 1907 International telephone utility wagon, a
1908 Buick, and the city of Fort Smith's first fire engine. The solar shades would also help
to preserve an installation of a pharmacy exhibition that includes compounding
equipment, a functioning soda fountain, and vintage soda bottles from local bottling
companies. These objects are used to tell the history of the town and are representative
of the period when the Atkinson-Williams Warehouse, where the museum is currently
located, was built.
Little Rock
Susanah Romney Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Arkansas, Little Rock
Project Title: Personal Interactions and Imperial Geographies in Early Modern Dutch
Colonies
Project Description: A comparative study of the early modern Dutch empire in North and
South America, southern Africa, and southeast Asia.
CALIFORNIA (32) $3,116,893
Bakersfield
CSUB Auxiliary for Sponsored Programs Administration Outright: $98,284
[Humanities Initiatives: HSIs]
Project Director: Dustin Knepp
Project Title: Crossing Borders, Making Connections: The Humanities and Ethnic
Studies
Project Description: An eighteen-month collaborative project for faculty to develop an
interdisciplinary Bachelor of Arts in Ethnic Studies.
Berkeley
Jacob Dalton Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Regents of the University of California
Project Title: The Spread of the Local: Ritual Manuals and the Rise of the Tantric Subject
Project Description: The research and writing of a book-length account of the creation of
early Buddhist ritual manuals in 6th-century Asia.
Kathadin Productions Outright: $74,907
[Bridging Cultures through Film]
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Director: Roberta Grossman
Project Title: Who Will Write Our History
Project Description: Development of a 90-minute documentary about the secret Oyneg
Shabes archive of the Warsaw Ghetto.
Carson
California State University, Dominguez Hills Foundation Outright: $1,000
[NEH on the Road]
Project Director: Kathy Zimmerer
Project Title: NEH on the Road: Wild Land
Claremont
Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden Outright: $5,872
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Irene Holiman
Project Title: Improving Environmental Conditions and Care for Archives and Special
Collections
Project Description: Purchase of an environmental monitoring system, archival-quality
shelving units, and archival supplies to protect materials in the Garden's Special
Collections and Archives. The Special Collections holds 2,200 rare herbals, historic
scientific literature, and illustrated botanical books, while the Archives houses 242 linear
feet of institutional records, original manuscripts, botanical field notes, original botanical
illustrations, glass slides, and photographs. Notable items include the Historia Mundi, a
1525 natural history recorded by Pliny the Elder; herbals spanning several centuries; the
field notes, diaries, glass negatives, and photographs of Marcus E. Jones, a major
Western botanist who recorded discoveries throughout the Southwest and Mexico; and
500 hand-tinted glass slides and photographs of wildflowers and landscapes from 1920s
Los Angeles. The collections are frequently used by educators, researchers, and authors
for the history of Southern California, Mexico, and the West.
Davis
Ellen Hartigan-O'Connor Outright: $33,600
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of California, Davis
Project Title: America Under the Hammer: Auctions and Market Culture, 1700-1850
Project Description: An economic, social, and cultural study of the role of auctions in
early America.
Happy Camp
Karuk Tribe of California Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Carolyn Smith
Project Title: Preserving Karuk Collections from UV Light Damage
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: Staff training in monitoring and control of the museum environment
and purchase of supplies to improve lighting conditions for a tribal collection of basketry,
ceremonial regalia, archaeological materials, and historic photographs. The collections,
housed at the Karuk Tribe People's Center, document Karuk life and culture in the pre-
contact and historic periods, and include shell, nut, and bead necklaces; clothing made of
animal skins; historic photographs; as well as over 100 examples of renowned Karuk
basket weaving. The northern California collection is used by tribal members and Karuk
language speakers, and for research, education, and public programming.
Irvine
County of Orange-Orange County Community Resources
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Justin Sikora
Outright: $10,500
Project Title: Islands of the Past: Digitizing Memories at Orange County Historical Parks
Project Description: A series of public programs and digitization workshops staged
across
four historical parks in Orange County, California: Yorba Cemetery, Old Orange
County Courthouse, Heritage Hill Historical Park, and Arden: Helena Modjeska Historic
House and Gardens. Utilizing the entire Orange County park network as a platform for
outreach, the applicant would team with independent consultant Justin Sikora and his
staff to collect and digitize material gathered from participants for storage and online
access at the Online Archive of California. Public displays of collected artifacts would be
presented at selected sites across the Orange County park system. Programs would
include training workshops, an exhibit of photographs from the Orange County Register,
a lecture by historian Ann Forsyth, and two concluding events at Yorba Cemetery that
would feature slideshows of the community's digital heritage.
Kai Wehmeier Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of California, Irvine
Project Title: A Critique of Philosopher Saul Kripke's Work on Identity and Necessity
Project Description: A book-length study on the logician Saul Kripke and his concepts of
identity and necessity.
Los Angeles
Autry Museum of the American West Match: $500,000
[Challenge Grants]
Project Director: LaLena Lewark
Project Title: Autry Resources Center: Preserving Historical Treasures for Future Study
and Inspiring Collaborative Synergies in the Humanities
Project Description: A building renovation to create the Autry Resources Center (ARC), a
collections care and research facility.
Sarah Gualtieri Outright: $33,600
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Southern California
Project Title: Syrian Migrants in Southern California, 1880-1945
Project Description: A book-length study of Syrian migration to Southern California,
1880-1945, based on archival work and oral histories conducted in California, Syria,
Lebanon, and Mexico.
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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University of California, Los Angeles Outright: $3,783
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Aaron Bittel
Project Title: Improving Environmental Conditions for UCLA Ethnomusicology
Collections
Project Description: The purchase of environmental monitoring equipment for UCLA's
Ethnomusicology Archive, which is housed in the university's music building. Collections
number nearly 150,000 recordings and include unique field recordings, as well as
commercially produced recordings of traditional, folk, popular, and art music from
Africa, Asia, Australia and the Pacific islands, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas.
Some highlights include the earliest known recordings of some rural Mexican musical
traditions from the 1960s and the "race" records and "hillbilly" music of D.K. Wilgus, a
renowned scholar of folksongs and ballads. The collection is used broadly by the UCLA
community and by scholars from all over the world.
University of Southern California Outright: $100,000
[Digital Projects for the Public: Prototyping Grants]
Project Director: Tracy Fullerton
Project Title: Chrono Cards: American Revolution
Project Description: Prototype development of two complementary card games and an
educational website to engage middle school students in learning about the roots of the
American Revolution.
University of Southern California Outright: $350,000
[Digital Projects for the Public: Production Grants]
Project Director: Tracy Fullerton
Project Title: Walden, a game
Project Description: Production and distribution of a first-person video game based on
the writings and reflections of Henry David Thoreau during his year at Walden Pond.
Pomona
Michael Cholbi Outright: $37,800
[Awards for Faculty]
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
Project Title: A Philosophical Treatment of the Ethics of Grief
Project Description: Research and writing leading to publication of a book in the field of
philosophy on grief arising from the death of intimates and loved ones.
Riverside
Clifford Trafzer Outright: $50,400
[Awards for Faculty]
University of California, Riverside
Project Title: Indigenous and Western Medicine Ways among Southern California
Indians, 1900-1955
Project Description: Writing a book on the cooperation between tribal communities,
doctors, and nurses to curb death and disease in southern California during the first half
of the 20th century.
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Rohnert Park
Sonoma State University Outright: $12,000
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Adrian Praetzellis
Project Title: Amache Digitization Project
Project Description: A one-day digitization event to be held at the Sonoma County
Japanese American Citizens' League for former internees of the Amache Japanese
internment camp located near Granada, Colorado, and their descendants. Digitization
would be organized by staff of Sonoma State University's Anthropological Studies Center
(ASC); items to be digitized would include photographs, documents, posters, and three-
dimensional objects. Audiovisual materials would be digitized off-site at the ASC.
Scanned images would reside in the Amache Museum's digital image collection; many
would also be available to the public on the Amache Preservation Society website. Public
programming would be centered on the theme of art and creativity, and would consider
the objects of beauty created by internees in such difficult circumstances. Programming
would consist of an art exhibition of digitized images five months after the digitization
day, and a presentation by co-directors of the digitization project on research at Amache
before it.
San Francisco
Alexandria Archive Institute Outright: $299,112
[Research and Development]
Project Director: Sarah Kansa
Match: $25,000
Project Title: Beyond Management: Data Curation as Scholarship in Archaeology
Project Description: A longitudinal study of practices of creation, management, and re-
use of archaeological data drawn from three geographical areas (Tunisia, England, and
Peru) to investigate data quality and modeling requirements for re-use by a larger
research community. The project would document workflows, create exemplary open
datasets, launch a new publication service, and develop online educational modules.
Bay Area Video Coalition Outright: $300,000
[Research and Development]
Project Director: Ben Turkus
Project Title: OC Tools: Quality in Quantity
Match: $25,000
Project Description: Continued development of Quality Control Tools for Video
Preservation (QCTools), which will address challenges associated with large-scale and
progressively automated video digitization workflows.
Cultural Heritage Imaging Outright: $159,299
[Preservation Education and Training]
Project Director: Carla Schroer
Match: $15,000
Project Title: Advanced Imaging Skills for Humanities Collections Professionals
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: Early to mid-career training in two innovative computational
photography techniques: Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) and 3-D
photogrammetry, for staff responsible for the care of humanities collections. A total of
seven four-day, hands-on classes would be held at six locations across the country with
over 100 humanities professionals being trained in the advanced imaging methods and
associated software use; a significant number of seats would be reserved for staff from
smaller institutions. Finally, a two-day symposium for 85 conservators and humanities
collections professionals would be held to share successful use cases of the imaging
techniques and introduce methodology updates and new software tools.
Mechanics' Institute Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Deborah Hunt
Project Title: Mechanics' Institute Archives and Special Collections Preservation
Assessment
Project Description: A preservation assessment of the institute's archives and special
collections as well an evaluation of the institute's disaster preparedness plans and staff
training. The collections encompass four diverse subjects related to the 160 years history
of the Mechanics' Institute: the history of California and the San Francisco Bay Area; the
development of industry in the western United States; the world of international and
domestic chess; and the institute's organizational records (membership records, minutes,
exhibition reports). Comprising more than 8,500 book and periodicals, over 1,500 digital
and analog photographs, and approximately 4,500 maps, atlases, gazetteers and other
artifacts, the collections are heavily used for academic and popular research.
Precita Eyes Muralists Association, Inc. Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Cornelia Bleul-Gohlke
Project Title: Precita Eyes Collections Preservation Project
Project Description: Hiring a consultant and two graduate student interns to conduct a
preservation assessment and provide recommendations for storage needs and improved
public access for an archive related to murals in San Francisco's Mission neighborhood.
The applicant seeks to preserve documentation associated with 540 mural projects
sponsored by the Precita Eyes Muralist Association since 1977. The collection contains
original drawings, narratives, photos, and video of most of the murals, as well as nearly
100 "portable" murals on Tyvek, panels, and doors. In addition, the applicant maintains a
reference archive of books, newsletters, and magazines documenting the muralist
movement in the Bay Area.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Match: $500,000
[Challenge Grants]
Project Director: Corey Keller
Project Title: Digital Engagement Programs in the Photography Interpretive Center
Project Description: Endowment funding for a new Photography Interpretive Center
(PIC).
San Jose
History San Jose Outright: $5,980
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Director: Catherine Mills
Project Title: Preserving and Enhancing Access to Santa Clara Valley's Built Environment
Archive at History San Jose
Project Description: The purchase of preservation supplies and environmental
monitoring equipment, for History San Jose, a historical site centered on the Pueblo San
Jose first established by Spanish missionaries and explorers in northern California in
1777. History San Jose encompasses 32 historic structures at three different locations.
Among its collections are 500,000 artifacts mostly documenting Native American life
and the history of Spanish and Mexican rule. Holdings also include 50,000 photographs;
more than 5,000 linear feet of municipal records, architectural drawings, and oral
histories; and 1,400 maps from the 18th century. In addition to rehousing some of the
historic maps and drawings, the project would also support a workshop for museum staff
on the handling and preservation of archival materials.
San Marcos
University Auxiliary and Research Services Corporation Outright: $99,605
[Humanities Initiatives: HSIs]
Project Director: Joely Proudfit
Project Title: Building a Twenty-first-Century American Indian Studies Program
Project Description: An eighteen-month faculty and curricular development project to
establish a minor in American Indian Studies.
Santa Barbara
Michael Rescorla Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of California, Santa Barbara
Project Title: Bayesian Modeling of the Mind: Conceptual and Explanatory Foundations
Project Description: Four articles on cognitive science and Bayesian modeling of the
mind.
Santa Barbara Museum of Art Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Eik Kahng
Project Title: The Santa Barbara Museum of Art Conservation Survey Initiative for
Paintings
Project Description: Hiring two consultants to perform an on-site preservation and
condition assessment of 800 paintings. Part of the museum's larger collection of
approximately 27,000 works of fine art, these paintings include European and American,
contemporary, and Asian works from the 18th to the early 20th century. The 800
paintings included in this assessment are a subset of the broader painting collection, and
are scheduled to be moved to a new, above-ground storage area. These paintings are
particularly vulnerable to damage during the move and require full assessment and
examination to ensure their safety while being packed and stored.
Santa Cruz
Kirsten Gruesz Outright: $50,400
[Awards for Faculty]
University of California, Santa Cruz
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Title: Language, Identity, and American Memory in Cotton Mather's La fe del
christiano (1699)
Project Description: Preparation of a book-length study of La fe del christiano (Boston,
1699), the first Spanish-language publication in English North America, written by
Puritan minister Cotton Mather (1663-1728).
Peter Limbrick Outright: $50,400
[Awards for Faculty]
University of California, Santa Cruz
Project Title: Moroccan Director Moumen Smihi (b.1945): Arab Modernities and Cinema
Project Description: Research and writing leading to publication of a book on the films of
Moroccan director Moumen Smihi (b. 1945) and the history of colonialism in the Arab
world.
Samantha Matherne Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of California, Santa Cruz
Project Title: The Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945)
Project Description: A book on the philosophy of Ernst Cassirer.
Stanford
Jennifer Burns Outright: $37,800
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Stanford University
Project Title: An Intellectual Biography of American Economist Milton Friedman (1912-
2006)
Project Description: A biography of the economist Milton Friedman (1912-2006).
Whittier
Whittier Public Library Outright: $11,951
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Paymaneh Maghsoudi
Project Title: A Time of Transition: Whittier Communities in the Post-War Era
Project Description: A region-wide series of public programs and a digitization event
hosted by the Whittier Library and the Whitter Museum that would solicit cultural
heritage materials from local citizens documenting the important history of postwar
Whittier, California, and its rapid suburbanization. Employing established local networks
and staff of the library and the museum, the project will support two public programs
featuring a presentation of the library's holdings and a lecture about the region's history.
A culminating event at the library would feature a slideshow and contextual
interpretation of the public's digitized artifacts, which would be on display permanently
in the Whittier's digital archives.
COLORADO (1) $33,600
Fort Collins
Zachary Hutchins Outright: $33,600
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Colorado State University
Project Title: Newspaper Reading and Early American Narratives of Slavery
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: An online database of early American newspaper references to
slavery and a book-length study of the impact of early newspaper accounts on the
development of American slave narratives.
CONNECTICUT (9) $418,403
Avon
Avon Free Public Library Outright: $5,553
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Glenn Grube
Project Title: Preservation Needs Assessment for the Marian Hunter History Room at the
Avon Free Public Library
Project Description: The hiring of a consultant to conduct a preservation needs
assessment of a collection that consists of books, serials, photographs, postcards, maps,
deeds, and other memorabilia related to the history of this Connecticut town. Highlights
include the family papers of Rev. Rufus Hawley (1741-1826) and industrialist Frank
Hadsell (1859-1942) and a collection of service histories connected with members of
Avon's Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 3272. A number of researchers, including
genealogists, have used these materials, which have also formed the basis for displays
and
public programs. In addition to the planned assessment, the grant would enable
staff to attend a workshop on the preservation of paper-based materials.
Hartford
Gary Reger Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Trinity College, Hartford
Project Title: An Economic History of the Greco-Roman World
Project Description: The completion of a book-length survey on the economic history of
ancient Greece and Rome.
Harriet Beecher Stowe Center Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Cynthia Cormier
Project Title: Upgrading Harriet Beecher Stowe House Storage Equipment
Project Description: The purchase of storage furniture and preservation quality re-
housing supplies for the material culture collections stored on the third floor of the Stowe
House, which are routinely brought out for exhibition and used in interpretive programs.
The 2,115 objects, including furniture, clothing, dishware, and personal artifacts
belonging to the Stowe and Beecher families, demonstrate everyday routines and provide
visitors with a way to connect to the historical themes presented—19th-century women's
history, African American history and racial attitudes in the United States, civic reform,
and Stowe's legacy as a writer—on a personal level. The work of this heritage tourism
site, program center, and research library reaches a wide variety of scholars, students,
and
members of the general public.
Middletown
Sumarsam Sumarsam Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Wesleyan University
Project Title: Expressing and Contesting Java-Islam through Performing Arts in
Indonesia
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: Preparation of a book on Islam and the performing arts in
Indonesia.
Wesleyan University Outright: $100,000
[Humanities Open Book Program]
Project Director: Suzanna Tamminen
Project Title: Reissue as free epubs 18 foundational books in dance and theater
Project Description: The digitization and creation of freely-accessible ebooks for 18
essential texts from Wesleyan University Press on the history of dance and theater.
New Haven
Yale University Outright: $74,650
[Research and Development]
Project Director: Paul Whitmore
Project Title: Effects of Relative Humidity Fluctuations on Paper Permanence
Project Description: A Tier I proposal to examine chemical and physical degradation in
paper artifacts as a result of cycling temperature and humidity. This application builds
upon a 2001 study by the Yale Aging Diagnostics Lab (ADL) examining the degradation
of rag paper when exposed to humidity cycled between 25% and 75% every two hours at
room temperature. The proposed second phase study would explore the key factors that
determine the magnitude of risk, such as paper composition, humidity range, and cycling
speed. Three different types of paper (rag, acidic newsprint, and alkaline book paper)
would be studied to assess physical and chemical changes that occur during different
environmental conditions. Molecular weight, tensile strength, elasticity, color and
moisture content would be assessed to gauge the effects of these fluctuations on each type
of paper.
New London
Lyman Allyn Art Museum Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Jane LeGrow
Project Title: Purchase of Archival Storage Furniture for Works on Paper
Project Description: The purchase of three flat-drawer cabinet units for the storage of
drawings, prints, photographs, and other works on paper. The museum holds a collection
of American and European art containing over 16,000 objects, 1,800 of which are
works
of art on paper and consist primarily of prints, drawings, photographs, and watercolors
ranging from the Old Masters to contemporary works. Collection highlights include John
Singleton Copley's three studies for the Siege of Gibraltar, Rockwell Kent woodcuts, and
19th-century daguerreotypes of Connecticut whaling captains. The collection serves as a
cultural and educational resource for the people of New London and southeastern
Connecticut, attracting approximately 20,000 visitors annually.
Storrs
Sarah Winter Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Connecticut
Project Title: Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, and the Novel in the 18th and 19th
Centuries
Project Description: A book-length study on the development of habeas corpus and the
idea of human rights in 18th- and 19th-century novels.
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Westport
Hartley Film Foundation Outright: $75,000
[Bridging Cultures through Film]
Project Director: Menachem Daum
Project Title: Gone but not Forgotten: Poland and the Recovery of its Jewish Past
Project Description: Development of a 90-minute documentary about the history of anti-
Semitism and its rejection in Poland.
DELAWARE (2) $181,000
Newark
University of Delaware Outright: $150,000
[Preservation Education and Training]
Project Director: Debra Norris
Match: $25,000
Project Title: The
Winterthur/University
of Delaware Program in Art Conservation:
Providing Specialized Graduate Education
Project Description: Graduate education in the conservation of humanities collections.
Support would be provided for partial stipends to ten students over two years as well as
honoraria for special guest lecturers.
University of Delaware Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Belinda Orzada
Project Title: Preserving Material Culture by Enhancing the University of Delaware
Historic Costume and Textiles Collection
Project Description: The rehousing of over 900 shoes, hats, and flat textiles from the
Historic Costumes and Textiles Collection representing American and Western European
fashion history from the 1800s to the present, as well as traditional garments from India,
China, and Myanmar. The collection is used in exhibitions, scholarly research, and
course design in fashion history and to illustrate cultural changes in dress over time. The
project would also involve the installation of programmable light-switch timers in
exhibition spaces to reduce light exposure for the sensitive textiles in the collection.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA (8)
$1,013,886
Washington
Association of American Colleges and Universities Outright: $200,000
[Humanities in the Public Square]
Project Director: Caryn Musil
Project Title: Citizenship Under Siege
Project Description: One national and seven regional forums and related public programs
at community colleges exploring the changing definitions and challenges to American
citizenship.
Folger Shakespeare Library Outright: $137,247
[Humanities in the Public Square]
Project Director: Peggy O'Brien
Project Title: CrossTalk: DC Reflects on Identity and Difference
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: Convening multiple forums across Washington, D.C. and public
programs addressing racial and religious identities through Shakespeare's works.
Folger Shakespeare Library Outright: $333,378
[Cooperative Agreements and Special Projects (Education)]
Project Director: Kathleen Lynch
Project Title: Teaching Shakespeare to Undergraduates
Project Description: A project to strengthen the teaching of Shakespeare to
undergraduates by leveraging the educational potential of the NEH-funded public
humanities program, "First Folio!: The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare."
Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation of
Historic and Artistic Works
HHH
[Preservation Education and Training]
Project Director: Eric Pourchot
Outright: $149,861
Match: $25,000
Project Title: Professional Development for Conservators: Providing Preservation and
Access for the Humanities
Project Description: Mid-career professional development through workshops offered
around the country for conservators responsible for the care of humanities collections.
Fifteen presentations of 10 courses would be held over the two-year grant period,
reaching an estimated 461 conservators and allied professionals. Twenty travel stipends
would be awarded to participants from under-served regions.
Gallaudet University Outright: $12,000
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Jean Bergey
Project Title: Capturing Deaf Heritage
Project Description: A day-long community event hosted by the Center for Deaf
Documentary Studies in collaboration with the Gallaudet University Archives to further
the documentation of the American Deaf community's cultural heritage. Through
digitization, the project would gather historical materials, including personal
photographs, family letters, documents, artifacts, and 3D objects. The event would
feature four workshops—free, bilingually (ASL/English) accessible, and open to the
public—on topics including: Cultural Heritage Material in Research and Public History
presented by a staff member of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History,
Artifacts and Cultural Heritage by a museum specialist from the Gallaudet University
Museum, Individual Collections as Community Heritage by faculty from the Center for
Deaf Documentary Studies, and Recovery Stories by a faculty member from the
Department of English who would provide a brief study of how individuals' text stories
are put into context for the public.
Howard University Outright: $100,000
[Humanities Initiatives: HBCUs]
Project Director: Dana Williams
Project Title: Sheshat: A Digital Humanities Initiative in Literature, Language, and
Criticism
Project Description: A series of activities, including developing digital tools, conducting a
summer faculty development workshop, and modifying course curricula, that would
enhance humanities teaching and learning at Howard University.
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Kathryn Temple Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Georgetown University
Project Title: Loving Justice: Blackstone's Commentaries and the Affective Origins of
Anglo-American Conceptions of Justice
Project Description: Completion of a book on literary and aesthetic conventions used by
William Blackstone in his four-volume legal treatise, Commentaries on the Laws of
England (1765-1769).
National Museum of Women in the Arts Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Catherine Bade
Project Title: Art Storage Development Plan
Project Description: Hiring an external consultant to assess the existing conditions of on-
site storage space and work with the museum's staff to develop a detailed plain for
implementation of improvements. The National Museum of Women in the Arts is the
only museum in the United States dedicated solely to works of art by women, and
contains over 4,500 paintings, works on paper, photographs, and sculpture. The
encyclopedic collection contains early works from Italian Renaissance painters Sofonisba
Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana through contemporary female artists such as Judy
Chicago and Sylvia Sleigh. The museum also holds a core collection of paintings by
Suzanne Valadon, the first woman painter admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-
Arts. The proposed storage assessment builds on four previous grant-funded collection
and building assessments.
FLORIDA (11) $994,361
Clearwater
Clearwater Public Library System Outright: $12,000
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Linda Rothstein
Project Title: Discovering Clearwater's Hidden Treasures
Project Description: As part of the city's centennial celebration in 2016, the Clearwater
Public Library in Florida would hold digitization events at its five branches to capture
residents' historical documents, photographs, and artifacts. Following the digitization
events, each branch would host a lecture to reveal the items discovered, featuring local
history experts discussing the history of Clearwater and the branch's neighborhood.
Digitized materials would be made available via the library's Pinellas Memory Project
website. As one of the earliest points of contact between the Old World and the New,
Clearwater's history includes unsuccessful Spanish missions, railroad development, the
sponge industry, and beach tourism. Each of the five library branches represents
a
unique constituency, including: an area mainly frequented by tourists with a small
number of permanent residents; a planned community; a Spanish-speaking enclave; and
one of Florida's first suburban neighborhoods.
Gainesville
Trysh Travis Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Florida
Project Title: Reading Matter: Books, Bookmen, and the Creation of Mid-Century
American Liberalism, 1930-1980
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: A book-length history of American trade book publishing in the mid-
20th century.
Jacksonville
DeEtte Holden Cummer Museum Foundation Match: $500,000
[Challenge Grants]
Project Director: Holly Keris
Project Title: Cummer Museum Humanities Program Endowment
Project Description: Endowment for humanities program costs.
Denise Bossy Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of North Florida
Project Title: A History of the Yamasee Indians: Ethnogenesis, Strategic Diaspora, and
Resurgence
Project Description: A book-length study of the history of the Yamasee Indian tribe.
Miami
Florida International University Board of Trustees Outright: $162,242
[Humanities in the Public Square]
Project Director: April Merleaux
Project Title: Ecohumanities for Cities in Crisis
Project Description: A series of public events, programs, and conversations addressing
the environmental threat posed to Miami from rising sea levels.
Orlando
University of Central Florida, Orlando Outright: $11,719
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Connie Lester
Project Title: Harvesting the Histories of Three Diverse Central Florida Communities
Project Description: "History Harvests" documenting three Central Florida communities:
the town of Cocoa Beach in the 1960s and 1970s; Orlando's LGBT community; and the
African American community of Parramore. Cocoa Beach's photos, maps, postcards,
menus, and documents would illuminate Florida's Space Coast and Cape Canaveral. All
digitized materials would be made available with permission in the University of Central
Florida's RICHES (Regional Initiative for Collecting the History, Experiences, and
Stories) Mosaic Interface and via local presentations at Cocoa Beach Public Library,
Parliament House, and Jones High School. Documenting these three Florida
communities would add texture to the public's understanding of the diversity within the
state.
Palm Beach
Henry Morrison Flagler Museum Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Tracy Kamerer
Project Title: Shelving for Furniture Collections Storage
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: The purchase of shelving to store 105 furniture pieces original to the
estate of industrialist Henry Flagler dating from the mid-18th to early 20th centuries and
representing the varied cultural tastes and artistic styles of the Gilded Age, including
Classical Revival, Renaissance Revival, English Arts and Crafts, Egyptian Revival, and
Louis XV.
St. Petersburg
Andrew Chittick Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Eckerd College
Project Title: The Jiankang Empire in Chinese and World History, 200-600 CE
Project Description: The writing of a book-length history of the Jiankiang Empire in
China, 200-600 CE.
Tallahassee
Ameenah Shakir Outright: $50,400
[Awards for Faculty]
Florida A&M University
Project Title: Helen Dickens and Medical Activism in Philadelphia, 1935-1980
Project Description: Writing and additional research for a book about the
medical activism of Helen Dickens during the years of 1935 to 1980.
Lori Walters Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Florida State University
Project Title: The Books of Christine de Pizan (1365-ca. 1431)
Project Description: A book-length study of French author Christine de Pizan (1365-
ca.1431), including her position as court writer and producer of works in her manuscript
workshop.
Michael Carrasco Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Florida State University
Project Title: From the Stone Painter's Brush: An Anthology, Commentary, and Analysis
of Classic Maya Literature, AD 250-900
Project Description: A book and the revision of a website on Mayan writing as literature.
GEORGIA (1) $1,000
Buford
Gwinnett Environmental & Heritage Center Foundation Outright: $1,000
[NEH on the Road]
Project Director: Cammie Fulmer
Project Title: NEH on the Road: The Power of Children
IDAHO (3) $517,974
Idaho Falls
Bonneville County Historical Society Match: $500,000
[Challenge Grants]
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Director: David Pennock
Project Title: Museum of Idaho Expansion
Project Description: Construction costs for facility expansion.
Moscow
University of Idaho Outright: $11,974
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Devin Becker
Project Title: Preserving the Recent for the Future: Generating the Latah County
Common Heritage Collection through Community Digitization
Project Description: Collaboration between the Latah County Historical Society and the
University of Idaho Library to conduct the digitization of materials related to the history
of Moscow, Idaho (home to the University of Idaho), and public programming on digital
history sources and community archives. The project would center on a digitization day
and a public launch event including lectures on local history, as well as two exhibits that
would be displayed at both partner institutions. A digital collection of scanned cultural
materials would be preserved by the university and made publicly accessible.
Pocatello
Idaho State University Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Ellen Ryan
Project Title: The Eli M. Oboler Library Special Collections and Archives Preservation
Assessment
Project Description: A preservation assessment of the university's special collections and
archives, containing published and unpublished sources focusing on the history and
culture of the Intermountain West. Sources include 2,779 linear feet of manuscript
collections, 74,000 photographs, and 2,300 maps and architectural drawings pertaining
to the region dating from the 19th century to the present. These materials document the
development of the natural and built environments in Idaho and surrounding states, the
history of westward expansion and the Oregon Trail, the experiences of several Native
American and immigrant communities, the growth and evolution of railroads and mining
companies, and the internment of Japanese Americans and detention of German
prisoners of war in Western states during World War II.
ILLINOIS (13) $1,080,621
Chicago
University of Illinois at Chicago Outright: $100,000
[Humanities Initiatives: HSIs]
Project Director: Jennifer Scott
Project Title: Securing the Common Good: Hull-House History at the University of
Illinois at Chicago
Project Description: A two-year project that seeks to integrate the Jane Addams Hull
House Museum and its history of social reform into the university curriculum and bring
the humanities to public service fields.
Chicago Film Archives Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Director: Anne Wells
Project Title: Assessment and Plan for Chicago Film Archive's Digital Collections
Project Description: Hiring a consultant to assess the archives' digital collections and to
provide recommendations for their care. Chicago Film Archives' audiovisual collections
total 25,000 items including film and prints, videotapes, audiotapes, and ephemera
reflecting life in the Midwest. Spanning almost the entire 20th century, they were
produced between 1903 and the late 1990s. The visual materials encompass various
genres, including documentaries, travelogues, educational and industrial films, dance,
experimental films, student and art films as well as feature, foreign, and silent films, and
home movies. At present, the collections are used for scholarly research and exhibitions
and for educational and public programing in institutions across the United States.
Chicago Humanities Festival Match: $450,000
[Challenge Grants]
Project Director: Jonathan Elmer
Project Title: Chicago Humanities: The Next 25 Years
Project Description: Endowment for the expansion of partnerships with universities,
humanities centers, and scholars, and to allow CHF to explore innovative and
experimental approaches to programming.
Gerber Hart Library and Archives Outright: $5,860
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Lucas McKeever
Project Title: Speaking Out: Preserving the LGBT History of the U.S. Midwest
Project Description: A preservation assessment of the library and archives to provide
recommendations for preservation priorities. The collections encompass more than 925
cubic feet of archival material from over 150 sources, including works on paper, objects,
photographs, as well as films and works of art that capture the legacy of LGBT
communities in the Chicago metropolitan area and the wider region. These materials
include collections from activists, writers, educators, politicians, and medical
professionals documenting the culture and history of gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and
transgender people. At present, the collection is used by researchers, authors, students,
and scholars for publications, teaching, and public programming, including exhibitions
both in-house and with other institutions, such as the Chicago History Museum and the
University of Chicago.
University of Illinois at Chicago Outright: $200,000
[Humanities in the Public Square]
Project Director: Jennifer Scott
Project Title: Making the West Side: Community Conversations on Neighborhood
Change
Project Description: A day-long public forum, community conversations at partner
cultural sites, educational resources, and a website, all focused on the historical
development of Chicago's West Side.
William Mitchell Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Chicago
Project Title: Seeing Madness: Insanity, Media, and Visual Culture
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: The writing of a book on how a range of media informs
understandings of mental illness.
Galesburg
Knox College Outright: $10,700
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Laurie Sauer
Project Title: Struggle and Progress: Documenting African-American History in
Galesburg, Illinois
Project Description: The digitization of privately held historical sources relating to the
African American experience in the western Illinois city of Galesburg, which served as a
stopping point along the Underground Railroad in the 19th century. Among the materials
anticipated for digitization are memoirs, photographs, news clippings, and records from
African American businesses and churches documenting the local black community's
participation in the Civil War and World War I, along with 20th century civil rights
activities and daily life in the community. New content would be contributed to digital
collections maintained by a statewide academic library consortium. The project would
also include several public programs, including a media production of the digitization
events, an exhibition of selected sources gathered from the community, a public lecture,
and a panel discussion bringing together humanities scholars and community members
at the Galesburg Public Library.
Skokie
Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois Outright: $5,661
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Arielle Weininger
Project Title: Stabilizing the Storage Environment of the Museum's Art Collection
Project Description: The purchase of storage furniture, light-blocking curtains, and
materials to rehouse 62 paintings, sculptures, and works of art on paper in the museum's
240-object fine art collection. Included in this collection are 13 drawings and paintings
by Arie Singer narrating his experience in the Belarussian Glebokie ghetto and 10
watercolors painted by Georg Wolff and Ferdinand Bloch documenting the people and
buildings of the Theresienstadt concentration camp. The Holocaust Memorial
Foundation commemorates the victims of genocide through a collection of over 24,000
artifacts, photographs, scrapbooks, publications and pamphlets, maps, and personal
items from before 1945. There are also postwar materials such as documentaries, made-
for-TV films, news footage, and oral histories. The collections are used for exhibitions,
tours, and educating docents and the public, including family members seeking to
connect with their families' past. This application responds to a 2011 conservation
assessment which recommends re-housing 62 of the Foundation's 240 works of fine art.
Urbana
Cara Finnegan Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Project Title: American Presidents and the History of Photography from the
Daguerreotype to the Digital Revolution
Project Description: A book-length study of the impact of the U.S. presidency on the
history of photography and photographic technology.
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Derrick Spires Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Project Title: Black Theories of Citizenship in the Early United States, 1787-1861
Project Description: A book-length study of conceptions of American citizenship
expressed in black print culture between 1787 and 1861.
Eric Calderwood Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Project Title: The Memory of Al-Andalus and Spanish Colonialism in Morocco, 1859-
1956
Project Description: A book-length study on how Spanish and Moroccan writers used the
history of al-Andalus (medieval Muslim Iberia) as a framework for understanding
Spanish colonialism in Morocco (1859-1956).
Eugene Avrutin Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Project Title: The Velizh Affair: Jews and Christians in a 19th-Century Russian Border
Town
Project Description: A book-length study analyzing the complex relationships between
Jews and Christians based on an extensive murder case from the 1820s-30s in Velizh, a
small town about 300 miles west of Moscow.
Gabriel Solis Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Project Title: Music, Race, and Indigeneity in Australia and Papua New Guinea
Project Description: Preparation of a book-length study of musical and cultural
exchanges between African diasporic and indigenous musicians in Australia and Papua
New Guinea, 19th century to the present.
INDIANA (11) $398,006
Bloomington
Barbara Skinner Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Indiana State University, Terre Haute
Project Title: Religious Conversion, Culture, and Identity in Russia’s Western
Borderlands, 1800-1855
Project Description: A book-length study on the consequences and impact of the forced
mass conversions of Greek Catholics from Belarus and Ukraine to Russian Orthodoxy in
1839.
Joan Weiner Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Indiana University, Bloomington
Project Title: The Significance of Gottlob Frege's Language for Science
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: A book reinterpreting Gottlob Frege's philosophy for application to
epistemology, logic, and the sciences.
Trustees of Indiana University Outright: $5,507
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Dru McGill
Project Title: Planning, Supplies, and Training for the Rehousing and Storage of the GBL
Photographic Collection
Project Description: Hiring a consultant to conduct a preservation assessment and
workshop for staff on proper care and handling, and purchase of storage furniture and
supplies, for a photography collection documenting archaeological sites, primarily in the
state of Indiana. The 12,000 photographic prints, 9,000 negatives, and 8,000 slides
document archaeological sites and artifacts representing the full range of human
occupation in Midwestern North America, including the Mississippian-period Angel
Mounds site, located on the Ohio River.
Greencastle
DePauw University Outright: $3,549
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Craig Hadley
Project Title: Purchase of Delta Design Museum Storage Cabinet for Contemporary
Works of Art
Project Description: Purchase of a storage cabinet and rehousing supplies for 139 art
objects in the collection of the Peeler Gallery on the campus of DePauw University. The
university maintains a 3,500 object teaching collection with particular strengths in
Japanese and Tibetan artworks, as well as paintings, decorative objects, and fine art
photography associated with the history of DePauw and the state of Indiana. The project
would focus on rehousing a diverse collection of contemporary artists' books,
photographs, drawings, ceramics, and three-dimensional works used by students and
faculty as teaching tools in a variety of classes.
Indianapolis
Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Amy McKune
Project Title: Detailed Condition Survey of a Native American Collection
Project Description: Hiring a preservation consultant, accompanied by a conservation
intern, to conduct a detailed condition survey of a recently acquired collection of 300
works of Native American art and material culture from the Southwest, Southeast, Great
Plains, Plateau, and Prairie regional groups. The collection consists of items both
ceremonial and utilitarian, including clothing and bags decorated with beads, quills, and
ribbons, as well as examples of California basketry, Pueblo pottery, and Navajo weavings.
This Indianapolis museum, founded in 1989, holds a collection of over 7,000 works of
art that explore the Native American and Western experience from a multidisciplinary
viewpoint, and are used by scholars, culture-keepers, the public, and educators.
Indianapolis Museum of Art Outright: $75,000
[Research and Development]
Project Director: Gregory Smith
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Title: Rapid Pollution Off-Gassing Assessments of Museum Construction
Materials by Gas Chromatographic Techniques
Project Description: Development of a rapid analytical protocol for measuring volatile
organic compounds (VOCs) in materials used for the display, storage, and exhibition of
cultural heritage materials. The new protocol would replace the outdated and inefficient
"Oddy Test," which is currently the only way to evaluate these materials for safety in
library, museum, and archival settings. A faster and more reliable approach to materials
testing has been a goal of conservators and conservation scientists for more than
a
decade. With this request, the Indianapolis Museum of Art Conservation Science Lab will
continue a year-long collaboration with Butler University to develop an alternative
protocol based on evolved gas analysis (EGA) that appears to offer improvements in
testing time, accuracy, and range of detectable compounds.
Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library Outright: $5,550
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Julia Whitehead
Project Title: Preservation of Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library Collections
Project Description: A conservation assessment of the Kurt Vonnegut collection,
preservation education for staff, and purchase of environmental monitoring equipment
and shelving. The collection includes first printings of 70 Vonnegut books and 25
signed editions, hundreds of books, films, and magazines about his writing and life, and
a 500- item circulating collection of materials Vonnegut claimed as influences. Object
and ephemera collections include an unopened 1945 letter to Vonnegut from his father
while he was a prisoner of war, his paintings and drawings, a pack of his Pall Mall
cigarettes, a Smith-Corona typewriter, and a box containing rejection slips from
publishers. The Library opened in 2010 and works closely with the Lilly Library
Manuscript Collections at Indiana University, which holds Vonnegut's papers from 1941
to 2007. A new institution which has prioritized public outreach and community
engagement, the Library has connected with all eight area public schools serving 11,000
high school students, runs programs with senior citizen homes, works collaboratively
with several major veterans' organizations, and boasts an impressive number of annual
visitors.
Muncie
Yaron Ayalon Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Ball State University
Project Title: Autonomous and Integrated: Jewish Life in the Ottoman Empire
Project Description: A book-length social history of the Ottoman Empire from the 16th
through the 19th century, based on a study of Ottoman Jewish communities.
Notre Dame
Amy Mulligan Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Notre Dame
Project Title: A Landscape of Words: Ireland, Britain, and the Poetics of Irish Space, 700-
1300
Project Description: A book-length study on how topography in medieval Irish literature
reflects authors' responses to events that threatened Irish land, sovereignty, and
language.
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Gabriel Reynolds Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Notre Dame
Project Title: God of Vengeance and Mercy: On the Qur'an's Theology in Relation to
Jewish and Christian Tradition
Project Description: A book-length study of the interplay between vengeance and mercy
in the Qur'an and its roots in Judaism and Christianity.
Julia Douthwaite Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Notre Dame
Project Title: Worrying about Money in France: The Art and Literature of Financial
Crisis, from Regency to Restoration
Project Description: A book-length study of how 18th- and 19th-century French cultural
expressions responded to economic crises in France between 1720 and 1820.
IOWA (3) $31,898
Iowa City
Ellen Lewin Outright: $25,200
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Iowa
Project Title: Traditional Spiritual Practices and the LGBT Community in a Black
Pentecostal Church Coalition
Project Description: An ethnographic study on the experiences of black LGBT
Pentecostals who belong to the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries.
University of Iowa Outright: $5,698
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Sean O'Harrow
Project Title: Assessment and Long-Range Planning for the Care and Sustainability of the
Textile Collection of the University of Iowa Museum
Project Description: Hiring a consultant to undertake a preservation assessment of a
collection of approximately 700 textiles from Africa, Turkey, and the Andes that
document diverse textile traditions from around the world. Highlights from the
collection include mid-20th-century cloths from the Yoruba (Nigeria), Kuba (Zaire), and
Bamana (Mali) peoples; 19th-and 20th-century flat woven kilims, pillows, and saddle
bags from Turkey; and mantles and sashes from the prehistoric Nazca culture of Peru.
Sioux City
Sioux City Public Museum Outright: $1,000
[NEH on the Road]
Project Director: Steven Hansen
Project Title: NEH on the Road: For All the World to See
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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KANSAS (2) $191,211
Lawrence
David Tell Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Kansas, Lawrence
Project Title: Emmett Till, Geography, and the Rhetoric of Place
Project Description: A book-length study on the rhetoric of, and geography surrounding,
the murder, trial, and memory of Emmett Till.
University of Kansas Center for Research, Inc Outright: $140,811
[Humanities in the Public Square]
Project Director: Elizabeth MacGonagle
Project Title: Engaging Communities for the Common Good: Stories about Migration in
the Public Square
Project Description: The collection of stories, using a public forum, and other public
programming, on Midwestern experiences related to new African immigrants.
KENTUCKY (2) $11,977
Bowling Green
Western Kentucky University Research Foundation Outright: $5,977
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Sandra Staebell
Project Title: Conservation and Environmental Assessment of the Kentucky Museum
Project Description: The purchase of environmental monitoring equipment and a
preservation assessment of the Kentucky Museum's collection of approximately 25,000
objects, which together tell the history of the state through items ranging from weapons
and armaments, clothing and textiles, paintings, prints, drawings, tools, household
furnishings, and personal artifacts. Examples from the collection include quilts from the
American quilt revival of the 1930-50s, 7,000 items of state political memorabilia from
1830 to the present, Shaker furniture, and several hundred paintings of Kentucky
portraits and landscapes.
Richmond
Eastern Kentucky University Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Jackie Couture
Project Title: Eastern Kentucky University Libraries Digital Preservation Consultation
Project Description: A preservation assessment of digital collections maintained by the
university library, comprising 5,500 items. Materials include faculty research, student
newspapers, photographs, manuscripts, and oral history recordings documenting the
history of the university and surrounding eastern Kentucky region, in addition to
supporting various fields of research interest among faculty. Among the subjects covered
in digitized oral histories are Appalachian culture, transportation, farming, coal mining,
politics, the Great Depression, and the New Deal-era Civilian Conservation Corps.
LOUISIANA (5) $246,706
New Orleans
Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Outright: $225,000
[Humanities in the Public Square]
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Director: Miranda Restovic
Project Title: A More Perfect Union: Civic Education for American Families
Project Description: Implementation of six weekly reading and discussion programs on
the Constitution and civic engagement at 32 sites across Louisiana for at-risk children
and their families.
New Orleans Video Access Center Outright: $4,472
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Elizabeth Dunnebacke
Project Title: Audiovisual Survey of the New Orleans Video Access Center Media Archive
Project Description: Hiring a preservation specialist to undertake assessment of analog
and digital collections in order to identify preservation and conservation needs, and to
teach a course on preservation techniques and best practices for NOVAC members as well
as local filmmakers. The grant would also support the purchase of environmental
monitoring equipment and supplies. NOVAC's media archive comprises more than 2,000
audiovisual records and 10 terabytes of digital video content that was generated by
community media sources and public access television. Dating from the 1970s to the
present, the collection includes performances by legendary jazz and R&B musicians,
coverage of social and political events in New Orleans, and documentaries focused on
topics of regional and local interest. NOVAC is a hub of community and educational
activities, but its archive is not widely accessible due to the unknown condition of its
media, in particular the video. The digital collections are used extensively for K-12 public
school programs as well as in community screenings at festivals and events.
Southern University at New Orleans Outright: $5,234
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Haitham Eid
Project Title: Preservation Assessment of the Wolff Collection
Project Description: The hiring of a consultant to conduct a preservation assessment and
train museum staff on preventive conservation measures, plus the acquisition of
preservation supplies. The museum would develop a long-term plan to preserve the
Norma Wolff Collection of African art comprising some 96 cultural objects (e.g., masks,
jewelry, instruments, and weapons) from West and Central Africa. The Wolff Collection
has been featured in exhibits and scholarly publications. Highlights include a Bambara
mask from Mali and Yoruba sculptures from Nigeria. Planned workshops would
introduce museum studies faculty and students to strategies to manage and preserve the
collection through effective storage, proper handling, and the regular monitoring of
temperature, light, and humidity.
Tulane University Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Annie Peterson
Project Title: Collaborative Disaster Preparedness in New Orleans
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: Workshops about disaster preparedness and response for New
Orleans cultural heritage institutions and the launch of a New Orleans Alliance for
Response. Six New Orleans cultural heritage institutions would collaborate on this
project: the Amistad Research Center, the Louisiana Division/City Archives of New
Orleans Public Library, the Archives of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, Tulane
University Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, the Louisiana State Museum, and the
National World War II Museum. Collections span many subjects including jazz,
southeastern architecture, Catholic history, the African Diaspora, civil rights, the history
of the Second World War, and the history and art of New Orleans and Louisiana.
Highlights include the Carnival Collection of original floats and costume designs from
1873 to the present, oral histories of New Orleans musicians, the records of the
Archdiocese of New Orleans dating back to 1769, Orleans Parish civil and criminal court
records, and comprehensive documents of French and Spanish colonial rule from 1718 to
1803. This award would support three workshops on collaborative preparedness and
response and hands-on recovery of book, paper, and audiovisual materials. A fourth
event would launch the New Orleans Alliance for Response. Assessments in 2014 and
2015 funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services identified the need for
collaborative disaster response planning and training in New Orleans, which is highly
vulnerable to natural disasters and where collections at nearly all the participating
institutions were affected by Hurricane Katrina.
Tulane University Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Marcello Canuto
Project Title: General Preservation Assessment of Ancient Egyptian Collection
Project Description: Hiring a consultant to conduct a preservation assessment and offer a
workshop on care and handling of objects for museum staff and purchase of preservation
supplies to rehouse a historic collection of Egyptian mummies and associated artifacts
that were acquired by the university in the 1850s. The unique collection, which dates to
the New Kingdom (between 1,500 and 850 BCE), consists of three wooden coffins with
painted decoration, two mummies, their cartonnage cases, and accompanying papyrus
and linen fragments. It was part of a 19th-century traveling exhibit that came to Tulane
(then the University of Louisiana) via George R. Gliddon, a United States Vice Consul in
Cairo, who used the mummies to illustrate ancient burial techniques in his lectures.
MAINE (2) $155,477
Portland
Maine Humanities Council Outright: $89,000
[Humanities in the Public Square]
Project Director: Elizabeth Sinclair
Match: $56,000
Project Title: A Broad and Sure Foundation: The 14th Amendment in American Life and
Imagination
Project Description: Implementation of a public forum and library-based public
programs that explore the 14th Amendment's history and legal relevance, focusing on
African American literature around citizenship.
University of Southern Maine Outright: $10,477
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Joyce Gibson
Project Title: Franco-American Veterans: Heritage of Service
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: A one-day digitization event targeted at preserving the cultural
heritage materials related to military experiences - at war and on the home front - of
members of Maine's Franco-American population, the state's largest ethnic group. The
grant would also support a speaker series addressing the history of Franco-American
military service. The theme of military service would allow the applicant to help the
public explore questions of identity and loyalty, which attended Maine's Franco-
American population from its early days. Digitized materials would be stored as part of
the Franco-American collection at the University of Southern Maine's Lewiston-Auburn
College. Materials that could be digitized include photographs, documents, film, and
audio.
MARYLAND (3) $278,121
Baltimore
Neta Stahl Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Johns Hopkins University
Project Title: Conceptions of the Divine in 20th-Century Hebrew Literature
Project Description: A book-length study of religious elements in modern Hebrew
literature.
College Park
University of Maryland, College Park Outright: $225,000
[Humanities in the Public Square]
Project Director: Sheri Parks
Project Title: Baltimore Stories: Narratives and the Life of and American City
Project Description: A public forum and a series of public programs that would help the
citizens of Baltimore to think about the narratives that are influencing the life and
identity of the city.
La Plata
College of Southern Maryland, La Plata Outright: $2,721
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Anna Kephart
Project Title: Purchase of Preservation Furniture
Project Description: The purchase of storage furniture for a collection documenting the
history and culture of the southern Maryland region. The Center maintains 225 archival
collections dating from 1594 to the present with information on indigenous peoples,
colonial settlements, early agricultural methods, commercial activities, and changing
patterns of architecture and land use. Also included are sources pertaining to slavery, the
Civil War, segregation, and the civil rights movement in the region. Of note are legal
records and correspondence of Judge Frederick Stone, a lawyer and congressman who
defended Mary Surratt in the trial for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
MASSACHUSETTS (10) $979,400
Andover
Northeast Document Conservation Center Outright: $300,000
[Preservation Education and Training]
Project Director: Jessica Bitely
Match: $25,000
Project Title: Expanding Preservation Field Services across Collections
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: A preservation field service program that provides assessments,
workshops and seminars (in-person and online), technical consultations, and disaster
assistance to libraries, archives, and other cultural heritage repositories, predominantly
in the Northeast.
Beverly
Trustees of Reservations Match: $450,000
[Challenge Grants]
Project Director: Lucinda Brockway
Project Title: A New Gateway for the Old Manse: Constructing a Visitor Welcome Center
at a National Historic Landmark in Concord, MA
Project Description: Construction of a welcome center at the Old Manse in Concord,
Massachusetts.
Boston
Appalachian Mountain Club Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Rebecca Fullerton
Project Title: Leisure in Wartime: An Historic Photograph Preservation Initiative
Project Description: The purchase of archival housing supplies and storage shelving for
some of the most sensitive items in the Appalachian Mountain Club's collections,
approximately 2,100 photographs documenting tourism and outdoor recreation in
America from the 1920s through the 1950s. Focused primarily on the New England
region, the collections provide a notable visual record of outdoor leisure activities and
how they were impacted by two world wars. They are used for publications, research, and
public programming across a number of disciplines, including history and environmental
science.
Cambridge
President and Fellows of Harvard College Outright: $100,000
[Digital Projects for the Public: Prototyping Grants]
Project Director: Peter Der Manuelian
Project Title: Digital Giza: A New Portal to the Pyramids
Project Description: The creation of a three-dimensional prototype of the Khafre Pyramid
Complex for inclusion in the Digital Giza Project website.
Deerfield
Historic Deerfield, Inc. Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Amanda Lange
Project Title: Developing an Emergency Preparedness Plan for Historic Deerfield
Collections
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: The creation of an emergency preparedness plan for the collections
of Historic Deerfield and a two-day training session for 16 staff members that will form a
"Collections Response Team." The grant would allow the museum to hire two qualified
consultants to help staff plan to secure historic properties and collections in the event of
an emergency, such as a hurricane or flood, by identifying objects requiring evacuation or
special protective measures. The museum's historic houses, dating from the 1730s to the
1840s, and the Flynt Center for Early New England Life exhibit a historically important
collection of decorative arts in America, with a particular focus on the material culture of
the Connecticut River Valley.
Holyoke
Holyoke Public Library Corporation Incorporated Outright: $12,000
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Eileen Crosby
Project Title: Nuestros Senderos: Las Historias de Nuestras Vidas en Holyoke [Our
Paths: Stories of Life in Holyoke]
Project Description: Two day-long digitization events in predominantly Hispanic
neighborhoods of Holyoke, Massachusetts, to digitize cultural heritage materials held by
members of the Latino community. The applicant would target community organizations
and elders, and would hire both a short-term outreach consultant and a bilingual
outreach assistant. Digitized materials from the digitization days would be made
available to the public with donor permission through Massachusetts' Digital
Commonwealth portal. At a public program event following the digitization days,
speakers from Hunter College's Center for Puerto Rican Studies and the University of
Puerto Rico would present on Puerto Rican and Latino history in the United States and
Holyoke. Displays created by community members illustrating their experiences and
incorporating digitized materials from the digitization days would also be included in the
public programming. In addition, oral histories would be gathered at the public program
event, and attendees would have the opportunity to make written contributions to a
collection that would be preserved in the History Room of Holyoke Public Library.
Medford
Elizabeth Foster Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Tufts University
Project Title: Catholics and the End of the French Empire in Sub-Saharan Africa
Project Description: A book-length study of Catholic positions on the future of French
Africa from 1945 until 1965.
New Bedford
New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center, Inc. Outright: $12,000
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Laura Orleans
Project Title: Salted, Pickled, or Smoked: Preserving and Presenting the Cultural
Heritage of New Bedford’s Fishing Community
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: A day-long digitization event and subsequent follow-up to preserve
cultural heritage materials held by members of the New Bedford area fishing community,
and attendant public programming. The applicant would partner with the University of
Massachusetts, Boston, which has run the "Mass Memories Road Show." University staff
would provide support during the digitization day and would also train volunteers.
Images would be stored in the University's digital collections, as well as at New Bedford
Fishing Heritage Center, the Digital Commonwealth, and the Digital Public Library of
America (DPLA). Items anticipated for scanning include photographs, documents, and
artifacts. Public programming would have three themes: sustaining community, life on
shore, and life at sea. Programs would include presentations by members of the fishing
community before the digitization day event at the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center;
a workshop by New Bedford Public Library staff on proper archival storage on the day of
the event; and an exhibit of digitized materials after the event.
West Roxbury
City of Boston Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: John McColgan
Project Title: Optimizing Storage Environment for Preservation of the Archives of the
City of Boston
Project Description: The purchase of equipment to monitor environmental conditions in
an archive housing approximately 18,000 cubic feet of municipal records. Established in
1989, the Boston City Archive manages an extensive collection of paper records and
bound volumes, as well as plans and drawings, photographs, audiovisual materials, and
microforms. Among its oldest holdings are the "Town Book" (1634-1660) and
correspondence signed by John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Paul Revere. Other
highlights include the records of the board of aldermen (1822-1909) and city council
(1822-2010), election records (1857-1978), and school desegregation records (1952-
2004). These and other documents offer a comprehensive look at more than 300 years of
Boston's history, from its initial founding in 1630, through its incorporation as a city in
1822, up to the present.
Westborough
Town of Westborough Outright: $12,000
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Maureen Ambrosino
Project Title: Westborough: Your Town - Your History
Project Description: A day-long digitization event preserving historical documents held
by community members and related to the town of Westborough, Massachusetts. The
event would build on the recent discovery of a trove of documents dating to before the
Revolution. Those documents and the story of their discovery and preservation would be
featured in a showcase program for the public before the digitization day. The digitization
event would be staffed by consultants from BiblioTemps, a service of the Massachusetts
Library System; consultants would advise on copyright and digitization best practices.
Following the digitization day would be the screening of a film of the event that would
include a presentation by a local historian on the significance of the digitized items, as
well as testimonials from members of the public about their materials. After the
digitization event, the applicants would also create an online exhibit featuring the
digitized items. The digitization day and subsequent programming would be timed to
coincide with the 300th anniversary of the founding of Westborough in 2017.
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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MICHIGAN (10) $237,550
Allendale
Grand Valley State University Outright: $11,522
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Melanie Shell-Weiss
Project Title: Growing Community: A Century of Migration in Oceana County
Project Description: Events that would preserve and raise appreciation for community
history in Oceana County, Michigan. The project would be undertaken via a collaboration
between Grand Valley State University's Special Collections and Archives and the
Kutsche Office of Local History, the Oceana County Historical and Genealogical Society,
and El Centro Hispano de Oceana. Building on extant community relationships, the
Kutsche Office would gather historical materials and oral histories from Latino elders
and youth through a one-day "history harvest" event. The project would also present a
series of community dialogues, which would take place during Hispanic Heritage Month,
about the history of immigration in Michigan.
Ann Arbor
Ellen Muehlberger Outright: $33,600
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Project Title: The Moment of Reckoning: Imagined Death in Early Christianity
Project Description: A book-length history of changes in the understanding of death in
4th-century Christianity and its impact on the roots of religious violence.
Michael Pifer Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Michigan, International Institute
Project Title: Integrated Literary Cultures in Anatolia and the Premodern World
Project Description: A book-length study of the "gharib," or stranger, in Arabic, Persian,
Turkish, and Armenian literature in Anatolia during the 13th-15th centuries.
Victor Caston Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Project Title: The Stoics on Mental Representation and Content
Project Description: A book-length study on the Stoic philosophy of mind.
Dearborn
ACCESS (On behalf of the Arab American National Museum) Outright: $12,000
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Elyssa Bisoski
Project Title: Impacting Dearborn: The Arab American Community
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: A digitization event, open to the general public, to gather personal
collections relating to the history of Dearborn, Michigan, and a community oral history
event. The project would provide for a one-day scanning event, complemented by
information on preserving family documents and photographs, coordinated by
experienced museum staff and community volunteers. That event will be followed by a
community-focused community storytelling and spoken word event, which will highlight
the cultural history and contributions of notable Dearborn residents. The Arab American
National Museum (AANM), in conjunction with the Lebanese American Heritage Council
and the Dearborn Historical Society, would coordinate and sponsor these events in
Dearborn, which has the highest percentage of Arab Americans of any city in the United
States.
Kalamazoo
Dennis Frost Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for Advanced Research on Japan]
Kalamazoo College
Project Title: The Paralympic Movement, Sports, and Disability in Postwar Japan
Project Description: Research and writing leading to publication of a book on the
Paralympic Movement in Japan and its influence on perceptions of the disabled.
Marquette
Marquette Regional History Center Outright: $11,745
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Kaye Hiebel
Project Title: Sisu Stories
Project Description: Digitization events and community exhibits in Marquette County,
Michigan. The project would support the digitization of family documents and
photographs. In order to serve a larger segment of the population in the largely rural
county, digitization events will be held in two communities. The project would collect
community stories as well as personal and family documents. Following the digitization
days, an exhibit based on the contributed materials would be presented at the Marquette
County History Museum, along with a series of public events including curator talks,
poetry readings, musical performances, and commentary on community history in local
newspapers. The proposed events would be organized around the concept of "Sisu," a
Finnish word for determination and perseverance in the face of adversity, and would
contribute to understanding of the Finnish American legacy in Michigan's Upper
Peninsula.
Mount Pleasant
Central Michigan University Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Jay Martin
Project Title: Museum of Cultural and Natural History Collections Project
Project Description: The rehousing of over 1,400 items including military medals,
patches, and equipment ranging from the French and Indian War to the Vietnam War, a
Civil War medical field kit, medical tools such as needles and surgery knives used during
the Great Depression for home births, and cameras and photographs ranging from the
1880s to the present. Materials from these diverse collections are used in exhibitions
designed by museum staff as well as by students in the University's Museum Studies and
Cultural Resource Management programs.
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Petoskey
Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians Outright: $5,583
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Eric Hemenway
Project Title: Archives Preservation Assessment Project
Project Description: Hiring a consultant to undertake a preservation assessment of a
collection comprising 160,000 documents, 3,000 images and 250 artifacts that
document the northern Michigan Odawa tribe's history and culture. Primary sources
include manuscripts, correspondence, newspapers, and historic photographs that
document Native American experiences with boarding schools, military service, political
activism and treaty rights, as well as family histories. Dating from the 19th and 20th
centuries, the collections are used for tribal research, exhibitions, and for educational
programming. The consultant would develop a long-range preservation plan as well as a
plan to move the collections to a new facility in 2016.
Southfield
Lawrence Technological University Outright: $5,900
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Adrienne Aluzzo
Project Title: Library Collections General Preservation Assessment
Project Description: A general preservation assessment for the library's special
collections, which comprise the personal working library of German-American architect
Albert Kahn (1869-1942) and photographic collections documenting the development of
Lawrence Technological University and the history of Michigan and Detroit. Kahn's
library encompasses 1,440 books, periodicals, and photographs that chronicle his work
designing and building commercial, religious, academic, and domestic structures both in
Michigan and throughout the United States. The library also holds 8,525 pages of the
newspaper Tech News (1933-2008), which relates the history of the university and offers
stories of regional and national interest. The collections are used for research and
teaching in the university as well as for collaborative projects with other institutions,
such as the Detroit Historical Museum.
MINNESOTA (4) $529,415
Minneapolis
Midwest Art Conservation Center Outright: $275,000
[Preservation Education and Training]
Project Director: Colin Turner
Project Title: Regional Preservation Field Service Program
Match: $50,000
Project Description: A regional preservation field service program that strengthens
preservation practices and the care of humanities collections at hundreds of museums,
historical organizations, libraries, and archives in five states of the Upper Midwest.
Activities include training workshops, disaster response services, preservation needs
assessments and surveys, the loan of environmental monitoring equipment, and
information and outreach services. In all, the project would support more than twenty
workshops reaching nearly 400 cultural heritage professionals in the Midwest.
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Outright: $148,015
[Humanities in the Public Square]
Project Director: Erika Lee
Project Title: Global Minnesota: Immigrants Past and Present
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: Implementation of a year-long project of public forums and smaller-
scale public programs on the history of immigration in Minnesota that would also
include a digital oral history project on recent immigrants' experiences.
Northfield
Asuka Sango Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Carleton College
Project Title: Debate in the Buddhist Monasteries of Medieval Japan
Project Description: Research and writing leading to publication of a book on the role of
debate among Buddhist monks in shaping medieval Japanese culture.
St. Olaf College Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Aimee Brown
Project Title: Item-Level Conservation Assessment of Rare and Valuable Books in the
Hong Kierkegaard Library at St. Olaf College
Project Description: A preservation assessment of the pre-1865 rare book holdings at the
Hong Kierkegaard Library. The collection, amassed by Howard and Edna Hong, St. Olaf
alumni and the philosopher's first English translators, is the largest set of works by and
about Kierkegaard outside of Denmark. This project would address the 8,000 oldest
volumes in the library's 20,000-item collection. The collection is used by established and
emerging scholars from around the world, figuring prominently in new works on
Kierkegaard, and the library offers fellowships and programs for researchers at many
educational levels. This grant would support an item-level preservation assessment,
including detailed condition descriptions of the most valuable books, item-level
conservation recommendations and prioritization, and staff training.
MISSISSIPPI (3) $305,479
Raymond
Hinds Community College Outright: $99,582
[Humanities Initiatives: HBCUs]
Project Director: Daniel Fuller
Project Title: Black Man's Burden: William Holtzclaw and the Mississippi HBCU
Connection
Project Description: A two-year program that would bring the history of William
Holtzclaw, an important but overlooked black educator, to the institution he founded, to
the region, and to the nation.
Oxford
University of Mississippi, Main Campus Outright: $200,000
[Humanities in the Public Square]
Project Director: Susan Glisson
Project Title: Civil Rights Literacy and Its Benefits to the Common Good
Project Description: Implementation of a statewide project of public programs, a public
forum in Jackson, and accompanying educational resources on the history of race and
discrimination in Mississippi.
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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University of Mississippi, Main Campus Outright: $5,897
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Jennifer Ford
Project Title: Preserving and Storing Oversized Materials in the Department of Archives
and Special Collections
Project Description: The purchase of shelving and preservation supplies for rehousing
300 linear feet of oversized maps, drawings, photographs, posters, and broadsides
pertaining to the history and culture of Mississippi. Materials include documentation on
major literary figures from Mississippi, notably William Faulkner; civil rights activities
and activists, including James Meredith and Fanny Lou Hamer; and blues music and
musicians, including B. B. King.
MISSOURI (5) $588,400
Fayette
Central Methodist University Outright: $1,000
[NEH on the Road]
Project Director: Denise Gebhardt
Project Title: NEH on the Road: Bandits and Heroes, Poets and Saints
Independence
Consolidated Public Library No 3 Match: $300,000
[Challenge Grants]
Project Director: Steven Potter
Project Title: The Story Center at Mid-Continent Public Library
Project Description: Adaptive reuse of an historic property to house and an endowment
to help acquire new materials for the Library's Story Center Collections.
Kansas City
Black Archives of Mid-America, Inc. Outright: $12,000
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Glenn North
Project Title: Kansas City Digital Encyclopedia Project: Jazz Age and the Great
Depression, 1918 - 1941
Project Description: The digitization of community photographs, letters, employment
records, artworks, and artifacts pertaining to the African American experience in Kansas
City, Missouri, during the early 20th century. The applicant would collaborate with the
Kansas City Public Library, which would make the sources accessible via its Kansas City
Digital Encyclopedia Project. The Library would also ensure that digital items could be
found through the WorldCat bibliographic network as well as the Digital Public Library
of America (DPLA). In cooperation with the American Jazz Museum of Kansas City, the
applicant would also offer public lectures by area scholars and musicians about the
history of Kansas City in the Jazz Age and Great Depression and would sponsor
screenings of films held by the Jazz Museum, including the documentary Women in
Jazz.
St. Louis
Missouri Humanities Council Outright: $225,000
[Humanities in the Public Square]
Project Director: William Belko
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Title: E Pluribus Unum?: Missouri and the Fractured Society
Project Description: Implementation of a public forum, a traveling exhibition, and year-
long, state-wide series of public programs examining the history of cultural and social
polarization in Missouri.
Paige McGinley Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Washington University
Project Title: Rehearsing Civil Rights: Practicing the Law, 1938-1965
Project Description: A book-length study of the relationship of theater, performance, and
the law during the civil rights movement.
MONTANA (1) $2,035
Kalispell
Hockaday Museum of Art Outright: $2,035
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Elizabeth Moss
Project Title: Museum Collections Equipment Upgrade
Project Description: The purchase of data loggers and light meters to monitor
environmental conditions at the Hockaday Museum of Art. The museum's collections
feature the historic and artistic legacy of Montana and Glacier National Park, including
artists of regional and national importance such as John Fery, Leonard Loop, T.J.
Hileman, and Gary Schildt. The collection also includes artistic renderings of the
changing landscape over time, due to recession of glaciers, and a significant archive of
papers and objects related to the Blackfeet Indian tribe. The applicant seeks to replace
outdated and unreliable environmental monitoring equipment with newer units, as
recommended in a 2012 preservation needs assessment.
NEVADA (1) $11,998
Reno
University of Nevada, Reno Outright: $11,998
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Scott Hinton
Project Title: North Lake Tahoe Digitization Day
Project Description: The digitization of visual materials and print media relating the
history of Lake Tahoe, as well as lectures by a local historian and a photographer that
would place the visual documentation of this region, long known for its natural beauty
and leisure opportunities, in a broader historical context. The North Lake Tahoe
Historical Society would join with the University of Nevada at Reno to gather and
preserve historic visual materials, with an emphasis on pre-1970s resources, which are
held in personal collections. The project would fill gaps in the local archival record, a
particularly pressing need in a region that has been often devastated by forest fires, which
has resulted in the destruction of cultural heritage collections and their dispersal through
institutions across the country.
NEW HAMPSHIRE (5) $487,384
Concord
New Hampshire Humanities Match: $350,000
[Challenge Grants]
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Director: Terry Dumansky
Project Title: Endowing Excellence, Innovation and Access through Humanities to Go
Project Description: An endowment to redesign and relaunch the "Humanities to Go"
(HTG) speakers bureau program.
Hanover
Dartmouth College Outright: $74,984
[Research and Development]
Project Director: Mark Williams
Project Title: Semantic Annotation Tool
Project Description: The development of the Semantic Annotation Tool (SAT), which
would facilitate the creation and sharing of time-based media annotations on the Web by
researchers, students, and educators.
Leslie Butler Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Dartmouth College
Project Title: American Democracy and the Woman Question, 1830-1880
Project Description: A book-length study of 19th-century transatlantic debates about
democratic government and the role of women and the family in the democratic order.
Portsmouth
Proprietors Portsmouth Athenaeum Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Thomas Hardiman
Project Title: Portsmouth Athenaeum Collections Care and Fire Safety Improvements
Project Description: Hiring an outside consultant to conduct a fire safety study and the
purchase of environmental monitoring equipment, including temperature/humidity
monitors and a visible light meter. The Portsmouth Athenaeum maintains an
encyclopedic collection of materials related to the history and culture of Portsmouth,
New Hampshire. Founded in 1816, the Athenaeum holds diverse collections including
important materials relating to the 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended the Russo-
Japanese War. Other collection highlights include a 1979 dockyard model of the
Portsmouth-built ship H.M.S. America and King George II's 1737 proclamation settling
the boundary between New Hampshire and Massachusetts. This proposal responds to a
2014 collections conservation assessment report identifying fire safety and improvement
of the building envelope as a critical priority in the Athenaeum's long-range collections
planning.
Star Island Corporation Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Kyle Belmont
Project Title: Preserving the Collections of the Celia Thaxter Museum on Star Island
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: Purchase of environmental and light monitoring equipment, as well
as installation of light-blocking, UV-filtering blinds and a vapor barrier to reduce
humidity. The Celia Thaxter Museum on Star Island was founded in 1960 to preserve
archival materials, paintings, and artifacts associated with the history of the Isles of
Shoals, to educate visitors through exhibits and interpretive programs, and to support
scholarly research. The collections document 400 years of island life and include
approximately 600 Native American artifacts; 7,000 photographs and items of
ephemera, 19th-century furniture from the island's Grand Appledore Hotel, and objects
owned by and relating to the life of island inhabitant and poet Celia Thaxter.
NEW JERSEY (8) $264,437
Burlington
Burlington County Historical Society Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Lisa Fox-Pfeiffer
Project Title: Assessment and Preservation Plan for the Burlington County Historical
Society
Project Description: Hiring an outside consultant to perform the institution's first-ever
collection assessment and develop a preservation plan. The Burlington County Historical
Society maintains four historic buildings which are all used to store and display the
society's collection of historical household goods, furniture, toys, and architectural
fragments. Approximately 20 percent of the Society's three-dimensional objects are on
public display, with the remaining objects stored in non-public areas of the building. One
building contains the Delia Biddle-Pugh library containing approximately 1,500
photographs, maps, books, journals, and ephemera.
Hackettstown
Breandán Mac Suibhne Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Centenary College, New Jersey
Project Title: At the Famine Pot: A Whispered History of Ireland's Great Hunger, 1845-
1851
Project Description: Preparation of a book length study of the various ways the poor
experienced and responded to the Irish Famine (1845-1851).
Montclair
Elizabeth Emery Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Montclair State University
Project Title: Clémence d'Ennery (1853-1914): A Female Connoisseur in the Age of Male
Collecting
Project Description: Completion of a book-length study of Clémence d'Ennery (1823-
1898), the first French woman to build a museum of Asian art, and the social and cultural
forces that influenced 19th-century women art collectors in France.
Montclair Historical Society Outright: $12,000
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Juandamarie Gikandi
Project Title: Nubian Heritage Quilters Exhibition, Workshops, and Digitization Project
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: A collaborative project between the Montclair Historical Society and
the Nubian Heritage Quilters Guild to recognize the contributions of African American
quilters and to educate members of local quilting guilds, as well as the community in and
around Montclair, New Jersey, on the importance of documenting and preserving quilts
and quilting traditions. The project comprises three interrelated parts: an exhibition of
quilts and interpretations of their historical context; demonstrations of quilting and
instructions on quilt preservation; and a digitization event during which the quilts will be
photographed. The digital images would be made available on the New Jersey Digital
Highway. Primarily highlighting the work of community quilters, the multiple events
would integrate exhibition with preservation training and information exchange
regarding quilting techniques and traditions.
New Brunswick
Suzy Kim Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Rutgers University, New Brunswick
Project Title: Women Behind the Iron Curtain: A Cultural History of North Korea
Project Description: Research leading to publication of a scholarly article and book on
the role of women and the significance of gender in North Korea during the Cold War.
Piscatawy
Beth Mardutho Outright: $2,837
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: George Kiraz
Project Title: Beth Mardutho Library Preservation Assessment
Project Description: A preservation assessment and the purchase of environmental
monitoring equipment and storage supplies for the Institute's 11,000 books, documents,
photographs, and music focusing on Syriac and other Middle Eastern minority traditions.
Collections include 4,000 rare books from 19th- and early 20th-century Iran, Iraq,
Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, and Kerala, India; manuscripts and audio recordings of Syriac
music; photographs of places and prominent personalities; letters and telegrams dating
back to the 1850s; 1,000 volumes and 14 manuscripts of 19th- and 20th-century books
printed by now-defunct Middle Eastern publishing houses; and 7,000 volumes and six
manuscripts on early Christian history and literature that enable comparison of Western
and Eastern sources. The collections have a wide scholarly use, and the institute
regularly collaborates with prominent universities for conferences, workshops, and
digitization efforts.
Princeton
Margot Canaday Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Princeton University
Project Title: LGBT Workers in the Shadow of Civil Rights, 1945-2000
Project Description: A book-length study on the employment of lesbian, gay, bisexual,
and transsexual people in the U.S.'s late 20th-century work force.
Michael Wachtel Outright: $42,000
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Princeton University
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Title: A Biography of Viacheslav Ivanov (1866-1949), Russian Poet and
Intellectual
Project Description: A biography on the influential Russian poet and intellectual,
Viacheslav Ivanov (1866-1949).
NEW YORK (34) $2,489,052
Bayside
Kupferberg Holocaust Resource Center Outright: $5,500
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Dan Leshem
Project Title: Preservation Assessment of Archival Holdings
Project Description: A preservation assessment of the center's archives, which encompass
approximately 200 distinct collections of materials on the Holocaust. Included are prints
and photographs, letters, family albums, postcards, newspapers, magazines, sheet music,
magazines, stamps, textiles, artifacts, and works of art. Many of the collections were
donated to the center by members of the local community in Queens and represent
family histories of the Holocaust. The collections continue to be used extensively for
education and public events within the Queensborough Community College community,
and also broadly by organizations interested in the Holocaust, genocide, and human
rights.
Bronx
Lise-Ségolène Schreier Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Fordham University
Project Title: The Gifting of African and South Asian Children in 18th- and 19th-Century
France
Project Description: Completion of a book-length study of the practice of giving
African and South Asian children as gifts to affluent women in 18th- and 19th-century
France.
Nina Rowe Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Fordham University
Project Title: The World in a Book: Weltchroniken and Society at the End of the Middle
Ages
Project Description: The completion of a book-length study on German medieval World
Chronicle manuscripts and an interpretation of their illustrations.
Wildlife Conservation Society Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Madeleine Thompson
Project Title: Preservation Assessment of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Archives
Film Collection
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: A general preservation assessment of the collection of approximately
2,200 historical films taken by WCS staff over the course of the 20th century,
documenting animals, visitors, and staff at the Bronx Zoo and the New York Aquarium,
as well as WCS's international expeditions in support of wildlife conservation. The
collection includes footage of a 1964 expedition to Patagonia to assess its threatened
wildlife and studies of Komodo dragons in their native habitats taken during the 1970s.
Only recently acquired by the archives, these films until now have been largely
inaccessible. With proper preservation and organization, the films would be made
available to the public, complementing the WCS's extensive archival records presently
used by scholars, educators, and students.
Brooklyn
Brooklyn Historical Society Match: $300,000
[Digital Projects for the Public: Production Grants]
Project Director: Paul Pearson
Project Title: Waterfront Exhibition: Water Log and Visitor Vistas
Project Description: Production of two large-scale immersive, digital experiences to
complement an exhibition exploring the history of Brooklyn's waterfront.
CUNY Research Foundation, NYC College of Technology Outright: $99,998
[Humanities Initiatives: HSIs]
Project Director: Anne Leonhardt
Project Title: A Cultural History of Digital Technology
Project Description: An eighteen-month interdisciplinary faculty and curricular
development project focused on placing digital technologies in cultural, historical, and
philosophical context.
Buffalo
Research Foundation for SUNY/Buffalo State Outright: $150,000
[Preservation Education and Training]
Project Director: Patrick Ravines
Match: $25,000
Project Title: Graduate Conservation Education and Training Fellowships
Project Description: Partial graduate student stipends for the 30 students enrolled in the
SUNY/Buffalo program in art conservation. Remaining stipend support comes from
endowment funds, federal and private grants, university cost-share, and fundraising.
Victoria Wolcott Outright: $25,200
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
SUNY Research Foundation, University at Buffalo
Project Title: The Utopian Strain in the Long Civil Rights Movement
Project Description: A book-length study of the long civil rights movement.
Flushing
Mandana Limbert Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Queens College, City University of New York
Project Title: Oman, Zanzibar, and the Politics of Becoming Arab
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: Preparation of a book on changing notions of Arab identity in Oman
and Zanzibar.
Ithaca
Cornell University Outright: $83,635
[Humanities Open Book Program]
Project Director: Dean Smith
Project Title: Humanities Open Book Program - Cornell University
Project Description: The digitization and creation of freely-accessible ebooks for 20
classic humanities texts from Cornell University Press in the areas of Slavic Studies,
German Studies, and literary criticism.
Jamaica
Queens Borough Public Library Outright: $12,000
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Natalie Milbrodt
Project Title: 50 Years of Integration: Personal Impacts of Demographic Changes on
Shifting Neighborhoods in New York City
Project Description: A project exploring the impact of demographic changes over the last
50 years in Queens and Brooklyn, New York, through digitization events, community
history programs, and marquee events organized by the Queens Borough Public Library
and the Brooklyn Public Library. The project would focus on six distinct neighborhoods,
including Astoria, Corona, and Flushing in Queens and Bushwick, Carnarsie, and Sunset
Park in Brooklyn and would ask residents, both old and new, to share personal histories,
pictures, memorabilia, and artifacts. These stories and objects would be digitized in
neighborhood events and made accessible both on site, at the Archives at Queen's Library
or at Brooklyn Public Library, and on local Web portals. Follow-up history programs in
each of the participating neighborhoods would further explore and contextualize the
archived stories and digitized materials. Two marquee events would conclude the project;
researchers, scholars, and community members would present and discuss the
collaborative work resulting from previous events. Through these varied programs,
participants would gain a deeper, multilayered understanding of the history of their
neighborhood and its residents.
Long Island City
Naomi Stubbs Outright: $8,400
[Awards for Faculty]
LaGuardia Community College
Project Title: A Critical Edition of the Diary of Harry Watkins, 19th-Century American
Actor
Project Description: Preparation of a scholarly edition of the diary of 19th-century
American actor Harry Watkins (1825-1894).
New York
Barbara Mann Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Jewish Theological Seminary of America
Project Title: The Object of 20th-Century Jewish Literature: A Material History
Project Description: A book-length study of the material qualities of texts and literary
depictions of objects in modern Jewish literature.
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Charlotte Brooks Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
CUNY Research Foundation, Bernard Baruch College
Project Title: Immigrants from America: The Chinese American Second Generation in
China, 1900-1949
Project Description: A book-length study of the history of Chinese Americans who
migrated back to China in the first half of the 20th century, and of their contributions to
the Republic of China.
Josephine Herrick Project Inc Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Elana Hart
Project Title: Josephine Herrick Project Collection Preservation
Project Description: A preservation assessment and the purchase of preservation supplies
for the institution's historical photo and film-based collections depicting military service
men and women. The collection, which amounts to approximately 8,000 items,
documents service members in New York City and in regional veterans hospitals from
World War II to the present day. The majority of the photographs were taken by
Josephine Herrick during and immediately following the war, when she worked as a War
Service photographer and taught photography to veterans. The collection also includes
photographs taken by veterans chronicling life in veterans hospitals. Currently, the
collection is used primarily for in-house exhibitions. With more accessibility, it would
support significant humanities scholarship particularly in the fields of military history,
the history of medicine, and the history of photography.
Museum of Chinese in America Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Yue Ma
Project Title: Mechanical System and Storage Environment Assessment at the Museum
of Chinese in America
Project Description: Hiring a consultant to assess environmental conditions and evaluate
mechanical systems in the museum's storage and off-site exhibition areas. The Museum
of Chinese in America is a nationally significant and heavily used repository of materials
documenting Chinese life in America. The museum's collection contains over 65,000
documents, photographs, artifacts, and memorabilia, while the library contains an
additional 10,000 audiovisual recordings, books, magazines, and newspapers. Central to
the library's holdings are its oral history interviews, which record the personal
experiences of Chinese and Chinese Americans in the New York Chinatown area, and the
only surviving physical copies of the Chinese American Times.
Museum of Chinese in America Outright: $12,000
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Yue Ma
Project Title: Our Family Treasures at the Museum of Chinese in America
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: A project by the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA), in the
heart of historic Chinatown, New York City, to document Chinese American history by
providing members of the public opportunities to learn how to store, preserve, and share
family objects and stories. This project would offer a day-long event for attendees to
digitize personal items and to participate in presentations and workshops on Chinese
American history and on ways to research and preserve their family heritage. Digital
images and object stories would be accessible on MOCA's Mapping Our Heritage Project,
an online repository hosted by the museum. Following the digitization event, MOCA
would offer a series of four workshops focused on training youth and their families in
techniques for researching family histories and conducting oral history interviews.
MOCA would also combine digitization opportunities at their regularly scheduled public
programs, which spotlight first-person stories by authors, filmmakers, historians, and
community members, who present behind-the-scenes perspectives into how they have
researched their own family histories. Overall, the aim of the project is to highlight the
untold stories and the living histories of Chinese immigrant communities in New York
City.
Museum of Jewish Heritage Outright: $5,200
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Erica Blumenfeld
Project Title: Storage Rehousing Plan for Textile Collection
Project Description: A preservation assessment focusing on the storage needs of 900
textiles from the 19th to the 21st century that help to tell the story of Jewish and Jewish
American life before, during, and after World War II, with a focus on the Holocaust and
its aftermath. Items in the collection include ceremonial textiles, such as prayer shawls
and textiles associated with the circumcision ritual, pieces related to the Holocaust such
as concentration camp uniforms and clothing made immediately after liberation, as well
as everyday textiles such as household linens, flags, and banners.
New School Outright: $250,000
[Humanities in the Public Square]
Project Director: Liz Sevcenko
Project Title: History of Punishment
Project Description: Community dialogues across the country on crime and punishment
using a community-curated traveling exhibition, a web platform, a series of public
programs, and educational resources.
New York Academy of Medicine Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Paul Theerman
Project Title: Preservation Supplies for a Collection of Historical Medical Pamphlets
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: The purchase of preservation supplies to rehouse the library's
collection of approximately 50,000 health pamphlets dating from the 19th through the
first half of the 20th century. The materials in this collection, which is part of a larger
collection of pamphlets, were created for the purpose of educating the public about
health and wellness issues, providing advice published in many languages for travelers
and immigrants, and promoting new food production technologies and recipes.
Collectively, they offer significant historical perspectives regarding health concerns and
changing attitudes to disease, diet, and medical training. Currently, the collection is
heavily used by the staff of the New York Academy of Medicine for training, tours, and
coursework, as well as by outside scholars and educators. The library also collaborates
with local museums, such as The Museum of the City of New York, in developing
exhibitions.
New York Council for the Humanities Outright: $200,000
[Humanities in the Public Square]
Project Director: Michael Washburn
Project Title: The Democratic Dialogue Project
Project Description: Implementation of six town hall meetings modeling democratic
dialogues, the creation of new "Reading and Discussion" modules, and "Community
Conversation" toolkits on civic engagement.
New York University Outright: $290,000
[Research and Development]
Project Director: Jane Anderson
Match: $30,000
Project Title: Local Contexts 2.0: Implementing Traditional Knowledge Labels
Project Description: The development of a set of protocols, standards, tools, and
resources relating to digital curation and stewardship of indigenous cultural heritage that
would assist non-Native collecting institutions and local Native American communities to
enhance access and management of knowledge about humanities collections.
New York University Outright: $150,000
[Preservation Education and Training]
Project Director: Hannelore Roemich
Match: $25,000
Project Title: Conservation Training and Education: The Future of Humanities
Stewardship
Project Description: Graduate education in the conservation of art and material culture
collections, with stipends for three students for two years and salaries for four adjunct
professors and guest lecturers.
Principe Productions Outright: $75,000
[Bridging Cultures through Film]
Project Director: Megan Mylan
Project Title: Playing with Ideas
Project Description: Development of a 90-minute documentary film about six-year-olds
learning to explore the world through philosophy in three locations around the world.
Storefront for Art and Architecture Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Chialin Chou
Project Title: Storefront Archive Preservation Assessment
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: Hiring consultants to draft a preservation plan and the purchase of
preservation supplies to rehouse the paper and photographic collections of the Storefront
for Art and Architecture. The archive's records document the organization's exhibitions,
performances, events, and annual benefits. Archival collections include extensive
programming and research files, as well as 700 pieces of original artwork. These artworks
were produced by program participants for exhibitions and events, and include pieces by
Shirin Neshat, Dan Graham, and Vito Acconci. The collections are used by artists,
curators, researchers, students, and the public. The material is also used in exhibitions,
both in Storefront's own space and via loans to other institutions.
Vaclav Paris Outright: $25,200
[Awards for Faculty]
City College of New York
Project Title: Epic after Evolution: Modernism's National Narratives
Project Description: Research and writing leading to publication of a book on selected
works of early 20th-century modernist prose and their relationship to national identity,
treating examples in English, Portuguese, and Czech.
Northville
County of Hamilton Outright: $149,517
[Humanities in the Public Square]
Project Director: Eliza Darling
Project Title: The Arcadia Factory
Project Description: A public forum and programs exploring demographic change on the
occasion of the Bicentennial of Hamilton County, New York in 2016. Ancillary materials
would include educational materials and an interactive website.
Oyster Bay
Oyster Bay Historical Society Outright: $12,000
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Philip Blocklyn
Project Title: Preserving Community Collections: The Oyster Bay Historical Society’s
Documentation of a Congregation’s Cultural Heritage
Project Description: A day-long event at the Oyster Bay Historical Society in Oyster Bay,
New York, to digitize the cultural heritage collections of the Hood African Methodist
Episcopal Zion Church and to hold a series of three public programs: a walking tour of
the 1850s church, its Pine Hollow Cemetery, and the surrounding historic district; a
community roundtable on the uses of primary sources in researching family history; and
a workshop on best practices in preservation. The church's collections encompass
materials such as correspondence, photographs, scrapbooks, journals, diaries,
genealogies, and military records that chronicle its members, who descend from free
local African-Americans and from families from Virginia who relocated to Oyster Bay in
the mid-20th century. The digitized materials would be made accessible on the website of
the historical society and on the Long Island Memories website sponsored by the Long
Island Library Resources Council. The public events aim to highlight the role of church
members in the development of Oyster Bay in the 19th and 20th century and their
participation in a broader national historical narrative through military service in the
American Civil War. The project would create new and extend existing connections
within the Oyster Bay community.
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Pocantico Hills
Historic Hudson Valley Outright: $100,000
[Digital Projects for the Public: Prototyping Grants]
Project Director: Ross Higgins
Project Title: Slavery in the North Website Project
Project Description: The prototyping phase of a website on the exploration of the history
of slavery in the north during the colonial period.
Rochester
Rochester Institute of Technology Outright: $100,000
[Digital Projects for the Public: Prototyping Grants]
Project Director: Owen Gottleib
Project Title: Lost and Found: Promoting Religious Literacies through Gaming
Project Description: The development of a digital prototype for a game that explores the
history of medieval legal codes with an initial focus on the Mishneh Torah written by
Maimonides.
Salamanca
Seneca Nation of Indians Media Department Outright: $11,398
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Tami Watt
Project Title: Seneca Historic Photo Collection Project
Project Description: In a multi-departmental collaboration lead by their Media and
Communications Center, the Seneca Nation of Indians will coordinate the digitization
and cataloguing of historic photographs, prints, and audio-visual materials at community
events throughout western New York State, including the March of the Nation, the
Marvin Joe Curry Veterans Pow Wow, and the Cornplanter Descendants Reunion. With
the Nations' knowledgeable elder population dwindling and in recognition of significant
visual gaps in the historic narrative, the project aims to preserve history and produce
community-driven content while also creating stronger relationships among community
members and fostering collaborations. The resulting collection of digitized media will be
exhibited at the Seneca-Iroquois National Museum to promote community dialogue and
interest in stewardship and history.
Stony Brook
Long Island Museum of American Art, History, and Carriages Outright: $5,604
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Joshua Ruff
Project Title: Rehousing Supplies for Textile Collection and Integrated Pest Management
Planning
Project Description: The rehousing of approximately 850 textile objects related to
American life, art, and transportation in Long Island, with an emphasis on the 19th and
20th centuries. Items include household textiles and clothing related to the family of
artist William Sidney Mount, historic costumes, samplers and quilts, and items of
clothing related to the museum's historic carriage collection. The project would also
support the development and implementation of an integrated pest management system
for the museum.
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Syracuse
Romita Ray Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Syracuse University
Project Title: The Visual Cultures of Tea Consumption in Colonial and Modern India
Project Description: Research for a book-length study on the development and visual
culture of tea in India from the late 17th century to the present.
Woodstock
Historical Society of Woodstock Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: JoAnn Margolis
Project Title: Preservation of the Collections of the Historical Society of Woodstock
Project Description: Purchase of environmental monitoring equipment and storage
furniture as recommended in a 2010 conservation survey. The Historical Society of
Woodstock is an all-volunteer organization responsible for the care of over 12,000 items
and the historic Eames House. Founded in 1929 by a group of artists, writers, and local
citizens, the Historical Society represents the dual identity of a small town as well as an
art community of national interest. Its collections are primarily early works of local
artists with additional personal scrapbooks, memorabilia, and photographs. Smaller
collections of textiles, audio and visual recordings, and photographs document both the
industrial history of the town as well as the artists' colony. Photographs and artwork from
the collection have informed numerous national and local exhibitions, and the society
regularly sponsors activities for historians, filmmakers, and genealogists.
NORTH CAROLINA (7) $738,564
Chapel Hill
Andrea Bohlman Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Project Title: Fragile Sound, Silent History: Music and Unofficial Media in Communist
Poland
Project Description: Preparation of a monograph on the history of media and music in
communist Poland, 1945 to 1990.
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Match: $500,000
[Challenge Grants]
Project Director: Bryan Giemza
Project Title: The Southern Historical Collection's African American Collections and
Outreach Archivist and Outreach Programming for African
Project Description: Endowment funding for an African American Collections and
Outreach Archivist and associated outreach programming for African American History.
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Outright: $113,939
[Humanities in the Public Square]
Project Director: Tanya Shields
Project Title: Telling Our Stories of Home: Exploring and Celebrating Changing African
Diaspora Communities
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: Implementation of a conference-festival, public programs, and
educational seminars on the African diaspora in North Carolina.
Cullowhee
Western Carolina University Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Mark Stoffan
Project Title: A Digital Preservation Assessment for Hunter Library
Project Description: A preservation assessment of digital collections produced by the
university library along with an on-site workshop for staff on digital preservation. The
sources include several thousand digitized photographs, letters, sound recordings,
material culture objects, and other items maintained by the library's Special Collections
unit. Among the highlights are over 300 images of Cherokee art and audio recordings of
the Cherokee language, 70 Civil War letters, 2,000 samples of Appalachian craft arts, and
300 radio programs containing life stories of Great Smoky Mountain residents from the
1920s to the present. These digitized materials have been actively used by scholars,
students, and others, including filmmaker Ken Burns, for his documentary The National
Parks: America's Best Idea.
Davidson
Peter Ahrensdorf Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Davidson College
Project Title: Homer and the History of Political Philosophy: Encounters with Plato,
Machiavelli, Nietzsche, and the Bible
Project Description: A book-length study of Homer and the history of political
philosophy.
Trustees of Davidson College Outright: $11,825
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Jan Blodgett
Project Title: History Homecoming Day: Digitizing the Gaps in the Diverse History of a
Small College Town
Project Description: A digitization event designed to document community history in
Davidson, North Carolina, particularly that related to the African American community
which is underrepresented in local area archives. During the digitization event,
screenings of the documentary short film Always Part of the Fabric, illustrating the role
African Americans played at Davidson College from its inception, would be offered,
followed by community discussion with Davidson faculty. In addition, walking tours of
community neighborhoods, an interactive online map, and presentations at programs
sponsored by the Davidson Historical Society and Davidson Parks & Recreations would
explore local African American history.
Trustees of Davidson College Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Caitlin Christian-Lamb
Project Title: Davidson College Archives and Special Collections Comprehensive
Preservation Plans
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: Preservation assessments of the physical and digital collections
related to Davidson College and the southeastern United States in the 19th and 20th
centuries. The organization's digital collections include 58 born-digital films, 3,500
digitized photographs, 20 born-digital audio files, dozens of digitized manuscript letters,
diaries, and college-related documents, and 8 digitized special collections. Physical
collections include 30,000 catalogued prints, 950 manuscript and archival collections,
700 objects, a 1,000-item audiovisual media collection, and 2,000 rare items. Highlights
include Under Lake Norman, a community crowdsourcing and curricular project
chronicling the history and personal recollections of the creation of Lake Norman by
flooding thousands of acres of farmland, an Arabic-language Bible owned by Omar Ibn
Sayyid, an African Muslim slave living in 19th-century North Carolina, oral histories
documenting the history of the region and town, and a collection of rare items related to
Presbyterian Church history. These materials are used widely in teaching and
community outreach, including an active crowdsourced digitization project, and
collaborative scholarship.
NORTH DAKOTA (3) $309,053
Fargo
North Dakota State University, Main Campus Outright: $201,104
[Humanities in the Public Square]
Project Director: Christina Weber
Project Title: Telling Stories, Creating Community: Understanding the Legacies of War at
Home
Project Description: A year-long project to initiate dialogues on the legacies of war in the
Fargo-Moorhead, North Dakota communities through two public forums and a series of
public programs. The project would also support the establishment of an oral history
archive, the creation of a community book discussion program, and a series of literary
and ceramics workshops.
Fort Totten
Cankdeska Cikana Community College Outright: $99,832
[Humanities Initiatives: TCUs]
Project Director: Eric Rogness
Project Title: Humanities Initiatives on Dakota Language and Literature
Project Description: A two-year historic and cultural preservation project to strengthen
curricular content for humanities courses in Liberal Arts and Dakota Studies.
Minot
Minot State University Outright: $8,118
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Bethany Andreasen
Project Title: Minot's Common Heritage
Project Description: A collaboration between Minot State University and the Minot
Public Library that would digitize family letters, personal documents, photos, film, and
video for the residents of Minot, North Dakota, and the surrounding region. Minot has
seen unprecedented social and economic change in the last decade due to the oil boom,
and the city suffered a devastating flood in 2011 that destroyed 4,000 homes. The project
aims to preserve and interpret community and personal documentary materials and to
reconstruct and safeguard Minot's cultural heritage going forward.
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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OHIO (5) $224,800
Cincinnati
Willard Sunderland Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Cincinnati
Project Title: Russia and the World in the Age of Peter the Great
Project Description: The completion of a book on the Eurasian dimensions of the Russian
Empire during the reign of Peter the Great from 1696 to 1725.
Cleveland
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Inc. Outright: $12,000
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Jennie Thomas
Project Title: Northeast Ohio Popular Music Archives Scanning Days and Program
Project Description: Community digitization events and public programming organized
by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio. The project would
document musical heritage in and around Cleveland, which was the birthplace of
significant musicians, notable radio stations, as well as a tour stop for many jazz, blues,
and gospel musicians before the rise of rock and roll. The proposed events would
simultaneously preserve documentation of local music history and bring them into the
museum's collection for online and on-site exhibitions through contributions to the
Northeast Ohio Popular Music Archives. The proposed activities, including four
digitization days and a one-day event with a panel discussion of local musical history,
would draw from personal collections to provide a window on popular music in a major
American city.
Columbus
Carolina López-Ruiz Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Ohio State University
Project Title: Phoenician Networks in the Mediterranean from Greece to Iberia, ca. 700-
500 BCE
Project Description: A book-length study on the impact of Phoenician traders and
colonists in the Mediterranean region during the late Iron Age, from about 700-500 BCE.
Ohio Historical Society Outright: $12,000
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Rebecca Trivison
Project Title: Ohio Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Scanning Project
Project Description: The digitization of community materials and support for public
programs that will deepen the historical record documenting Ohio's lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. The project would support a scanning day
and programs that include talks by curators as well as community exhibit spaces that
would serve audiences around Ohio, in both urban and rural communities. The proposed
project would contribute digitized community material, including letters, diaries,
photographs, and scrapbooks that document the recent decades of this community, to the
Ohio History Connection (OHC).
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Ohio Humanities Council Outright: $100,000
[Digital Projects for the Public: Prototyping Grants]
Project Director: Patricia Williamsen
Project Title: SeeOhioFirst.org
Project Description: Prototype for a statewide website and mobile application showcasing
Ohio humanities and cultural resources.
OKLAHOMA (3) $105,587
Edmond
Edmond Historical Society & Museum Outright: $4,787
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Deborah Baker
Project Title: Collections Storage and Environmental Monitoring Improvement
Project Description: Purchase of equipment for environmental, light, pest, and flood
monitoring, as well as improved storage through the purchase of new shelving and plastic
sheeting for dust exclusion. The Edmond Historical Society and Museum contains over
35,000 artifacts, photos, and documents relating to the history of Edmond, Oklahoma
Territory, from the Land Run of 1889 up to the present. A majority of the collection items
are photographs and paper-based documents, including the image archive of the
Edmond Sun newspaper. The museum has recently surveyed its object and textile
collections, which include diverse objects such as scouting uniforms, farm implements,
jailhouse doors, and rugs.
Norman
Hugh Benson Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Oklahoma, Norman
Project Title: Plato's Maieutic Method: Inquiry in Plato's Theaetetus
Project Description: A book-length study on Plato's dialogue Theaetetus.
Jennifer Saltzstein Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Oklahoma, Norman
Project Title: Medieval Learning and Vernacular Music: The Songs of the Cleric-
Trouvères
Project Description: Preparation of a monograph on the history of 13th-century French
songs and the rise of vernacular languages.
OREGON (7) $813,218
Cornelius
City of Cornelius Match: $500,000
[Challenge Grants]
Project Director: Karen Hill
Project Title: New Library and Community Convening Space
Project Description: Construction of a new library building in Cornelius, Oregon.
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Corvallis
Oregon State University Outright: $96,437
[Humanities Open Book Program]
Project Director: Korey Jackson
Project Title: Resurfacing At-Risk Works of the Feminist Small Press
Project Description: The digitization and creation of freely-accessible ebooks for 26
essential texts from women authors representing work originally published by the
Oregon-based independent press CALYX.
Eugene
Gina Herrmann Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Oregon
Project Title: Voices of the Vanquished: Spanish Women of the Left between Franco and
Hitler
Project Description: Archival research for a book-length study of Spanish Republican
women who resisted European fascism from the 1930s through the 1960s.
University of Oregon Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Jill Hartz
Project Title: Rehousing of Oversize, Flat Items from the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of
Art Collections
Project Description: Purchase of a storage cabinet for 156 oversize works of art. The
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon has nearly 7,800 large paper
and photographic items, representing a wide variety of paintings, prints, and woodblocks
from the United States and around the world. Approximately 156 unusually large items
do not fit into standard files and are therefore difficult to access. The new cabinet would
improve the long-term preservation of these objects and increase scholarly research and
public use of these collections.
Portland
Oregon Humanities Outright: $125,000
[Humanities in the Public Square]
Project Director: Adam Davis
Project Title: Power and Place: A Year-long Project by Oregon Humanities
Project Description: Implementation of 24 community discussions, a one-day public
symposium, and numerous public programs all exploring issues of place, home, and
belonging across Oregon.
Salem
Michael Chasar Outright: $29,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Willamette University
Project Title: Beyond the Book: Poetry and New Media in Modern America
Project Description: A book-length study of American poetry and new media.
Oregon State Library Outright: $5,981
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Director: Marjorie Harrison
Project Title: Oregon State Library's Oregon Collection Preservation Re-Housing Project
Project Description: The purchase of furniture and supplies to rehouse nearly 4,000
items in a collection of more than 70,000 titles pertaining to Oregon's history and
culture. Books, periodicals, pamphlets, maps, and audiovisual items constitute the
library's collection, which is regularly used to support research by state agencies and the
general public. Ongoing work supported by the library includes research on historic
structures and landscapes for preservation and design projects, as well as scholarly
research on topics that range from the history of African Americans in Oregon to the
daily life of pioneers on the Oregon Trail.
PENNSYLVANIA (20) $1,846,988
Bethlehem
Lehigh University Match: $500,000
[Challenge Grants]
Project Director: James Peterson
Project Title: Black Publics/Lived Experience: Africana Studies and the Public
Humanities at Lehigh University
Project Description: An endowment to expand the University's Africana Studies Public
Humanities initiatives.
Northampton County Area Community College Outright: $156,340
[Humanities in the Public Square]
Project Director: Kelly Allen
Project Title: Food and Community: The Collective Human Experience
Project Description: Public forums and programs to generate humanities-based
community dialogue about human and cultural values related to food.
Easton
Suzanne Westfall Outright: $33,600
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Lafayette College
Project Title: Records of Early English Drama: Northumberland
Project Description: Archival research on the history of early drama in Northumberland,
England, as part of the Records of Early English Drama series.
Johnstown
Pennsylvania Highlands Community College Outright: $4,222
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Barbara Zaborowski
Project Title: Families Forever: A Cambria Memory Project
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: A series of community digitization events focusing on the immigrant
history of Cambria County, Pennsylvania, through the collection of family photos,
mementos, and artifacts. The Cambria County Historical Society, St. Francis University,
the Johnstown Area Historical Association, and the Pennsylvania Highlands Community
College would each serve as a scanning location and host cultural programs for the
public, to include presentations entitled Healing African Dance, Pennsylvania German
Groundhog Lodges, and Sevdalinka: A Musical Tour of Bosnia. In addition to the cultural
heritage programming, Pennsylvania Highlands Community College in Johnstown would
offer two workshops on how to handle and preserve family items using simple
preservation materials readily available to the public.
Philadelphia
African American Museum in Philadelphia Outright: $12,000
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Adrienne Whaley
Project Title: Documenting Philadelphia's African American Community History
Project Description: A community event to explore Philadelphia's African American
history through community photograph contributed by members of the public, as well as
programming to highlight photography at the African American Museum in Philadelphia.
In addition to scanning community materials, the event would include workshops on
family history and photographic preservation presented by the African American
Genealogy Group, a lecture on the life of local African American photographer Jack
Franklin, whose archives were left to the museum in 1986, and a film screening of the
documentary, Through A Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a
People.
Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts Outright: $45,000
[Preservation Education and Training]
Project Director: Dyani Feige
Project Title: Advanced Fellowship in Preventive Conservation
Project Description: A year-long, post-graduate fellowship in the preventive conservation
of cultural heritage. The NEH fellow would acquire skills necessary to assist a variety of
collecting institutions by assessing their preservation needs, developing preservation and
disaster response plans, and conducting risk assessments.
Cynthia Connolly Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Pennsylvania
Project Title: Children, Drug Therapy, and Pharmaceuticals in the United States, 1906-
1979
Project Description: A book-length history of the development, use, and marketing of
drugs for children.
David Spafford Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Pennsylvania
Project Title: The Corporate House in Japan, 1450-1650
Project Description: Research and writing leading to publication of a book on the social
functions of warrior houses during Japan's long civil war (from 1455-1615).
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation Match: $280,000
[Challenge Grants]
Project Director: Siobhan Reardon
Project Title: Free Library of Philadelphia Community Humanities Endowment
Project Description: A Community Humanities Endowment to engage grassroots
Philadelphia community partners in collaborative projects and a modest amount for
fundraising activities.
Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Philadelphia Outright: $4,128
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: John Anderies
Project Title: Media Cabinet for Audiovisual Collection of the John J. Wilcox, Jr. LGBT
Archives of the William Way LGBT Community Center
Project Description: The purchase and installation of a media cabinet for the center's
audio and visual media, which encompass a number of collections donated by local
individuals and organizations. Currently totaling 1,692 items, they include a wide variety
of media-- reel tapes, audio cassettes and discs, compact discs, digital audio tapes, 8 mm
and 16 mm films, video reels, and digital video discs. The archive documents LGBT
history in the United States with specific concentrations in LGBT and feminist rights
movements in Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley region. At present, it serves a
number of important community needs both on the local and national levels; it provides
an educational resource for middle school through graduate levels and is used broadly for
scholarly and popular research projects, including book publications and documentary
films.
National Constitution Center Outright: $175,000
[Humanities in the Public Square]
Project Director: Jeffrey Rosen
Project Title: The Second Founding: The History and Meaning of the Fourteenth
Amendment
Project Description: A public forum, public programs, production of podcasts, and
creation of educational materials that explore the 14th Amendment's history and its
relevance today.
Presbyterian Historical Society Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Natalie Shilstut
Project Title: Conservation Environment Assessment
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: Hiring an environmental engineer, preservation specialist,
and
HVAC
technician to assess safety and security of the Presbyterian Historical Society's
collections by investigating its HVAC systems, building envelope, fire protection, lighting,
and electrical systems and provide specific recommendations for sustainable
improvements. The Presbyterian Historical Society is the national archive of the
Presbyterian Church; its archival, library, and museum collections document 500 years of
religious, political, and cultural history. Significant holdings include The American Indian
Correspondence Collection consisting of 14,000 letters written by missionaries
documenting their work among Native Americans, and over 23,000 cubic feet of official
denominational records, including minutes from the first presbytery meeting in
Philadelphia in 1706.
Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia Outright: $3,715
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Katherine Haas
Project Title: Environmental Monitoring Upgrades for Historic Rosenbach Collections
Project Description: Upgraded environmental monitoring equipment for the Rosenbach
of the Free Library of Philadelphia. The Rosenbach, which affiliated with the Free
Library of Philadelphia in 2013, holds the personal collection of rare book, manuscript,
and art dealers Dr. A.S.W. and his brother Philip Rosenbach, who helped to build the
holdings at the Folger and Huntington Libraries. Notable items include the sole
surviving copy of Benjamin Franklin's first Poor Richard's Almanac; the manuscript of
James Joyce's Ulysses; the papers of modernist poet Marianne Moore; Bram Stoker's
notes for Dracula; rare editions of books by Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, and Lewis
Carroll; and art objects including Egyptian sculpture, English furniture, and American
portraiture. The museum hosts many activities for the public, including regular
exhibitions, hands-on tours, reading groups, a Bloomsday celebration, and research
hours. The organization has also partnered with local elementary schools, inspiring
projects such as studying the Yellow Fever epidemic, learning about poetry through the
letters of Langston Hughes, and military base students writing to their own deployed
family members after reading Civil War soldiers' letters to their families.
South Asian American Digital Archive, NFP Outright: $12,000
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Samip Mallick
Project Title: Our Stories: South Asian Americans in Los Angeles
Project Description: A series of public programming events and digitization sessions
located in two Los Angeles neighborhoods with cultural and historical resources that
illuminate what it means to be South Asian American. The project would raise awareness
of South Asian American heritage by strengthening established community networks and
raising awareness through the South Asian American Digital Archive. The events would
feature lectures by historians, stories drawn from the South Asian American Digital
Archive, and a slideshow and discussions centered on the artifacts digitized during the
program.
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Vanessa Ogle Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Pennsylvania
Project Title: Neoliberalism and Political Economy, 1920s-1980s
Project Description: A book-length study on the history of economic neoliberalism from
the 1920s to the 1980s.
Pittsburgh
Carnegie Institute Outright: $153,390
[Research and Development]
Project Director: Neil Kulas
Match: $196,610
Project Title: Art Tracks: Standardizing Digital Provenance Documentation for Cultural
Objects
Project Description: The development of a standard for the digital sharing of provenance
information on works of art through structured Linked Open Data, which will improve
the usefulness of provenance data for scholarly research, exhibition programming, and
museum collection management.
Chatham University Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Molly Tighe
Project Title: Chatham University Special Collections Preservation Assessment
Project Description: A preservation assessment of the university's archives and special
collections, comprising over 740 linear feet of records, photographs, student and
administrative publications, audiovisual recordings, architectural drawings, and artifacts.
The materials date to the founding of Chatham University in 1869, documenting the
history of one of the nation's first women's colleges to grant baccalaureate degrees.
Highlights of the collection include papers of author and environmentalist Rachel
Carson, a 1929 graduate of the university; books and illustrations on Mesoamerican
anthropology and archaeology; and biographies, oral histories, artwork, and early maps
depicting the history and culture of Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania more generally.
University of Pittsburgh Outright: $69,041
[Research and Development]
Project Director: Alison Langmead
Project Title: Sustaining MedArt: The Impact of Socio-Technical Factors on Digital
Preservation Strategies
Project Description: A case study investigating the sustainability of digital humanities
projects by conducting user surveys and oral histories related to the developmental
history of an online image collection created in the mid-1990s of medieval architecture
and artifacts known as MedArt. The research will lead to the publication of a Web-based
"Socio-Technical Digital Preservation Roadmap" that documents and guides digital
humanists and preservation professionals through the preservation planning process.
Swarthmore
Barbara Milewski Outright: $33,600
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Swarthmore College
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Title: Hidden in Plain View: The Music of Holocaust Survival in Poland's First
Postwar Feature Film
Project Description: Preparation of the first authoritative English translation and article-
length study of Forbidden Songs (screenplay by Holocaust survivor Ludwik Starski), the
first feature film released in Poland after World War II.
West Chester
County of Chester, Chester County Archives Outright: $5,142
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Laurie Rofini
Project Title: Chester County Archives Environmental Monitoring and Preservation of
Oversized Records
Project Description: The purchase of preservation supplies and storage furniture to
rehouse part of a large local history collection dating from the late 17th century to the
present and serving scholarly researchers, genealogists, and members of the public. The
archives maintains 2,940 volumes on the history of this Pennsylvania county and its
environs, along with 1,823 cubic feet of county government records. The latter includes
vital statistics, naturalization, criminal and civil court, land, probate, and tax records.
The proposed project focuses on rehousing an estimated 700 oversized drafts and
surveys. Among them are drafts and surveys of early roads, election districts, municipal
boundaries, the settlement of estates, and surveys and subdivision plans associated with
recorded deeds. Finally, the applicant would purchase equipment to monitor
environmental conditions in the storage areas.
RHODE ISLAND (4) $59,362
Exeter
Tomaquag Indian Memorial Museum Outright: $5,362
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Loren Spears
Project Title: Collections Needs Assessment at the Tomaquag Indian Memorial Museum
Project Description: Hiring a consultant to undertake a preservation assessment and
offer training for staff to improve care for a collection of 100,000 archival items
(personal journals, scrapbooks, newspapers, maps, tribal government documents,
photographs, and slides), 500 library books, and 20,000 cultural objects that document
indigenous peoples of southern New England. Among the original writings are plays and
pageants that depict 18th- and 19th-century historical events penned by Princess Red
Wing (1895-1987), a historian, curator, storyteller, and founder of the museum.
Highlights of the collection include a prehistoric strand of wampum and a 19th-century
canoe crafted entirely using traditional techniques and decorations. The collections are
used by historians, artists, filmmakers, authors, students, and the public at large.
Newport
Newport Restoration Foundation Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Margot Nishimura
Project Title: Assessment of Historic Preservation Archives and Staff Training for
Managing Public Access
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: A preservation assessment of an archive comprising roughly 200
linear feet of architectural plans, elevations, and photographic documentation dealing
with the restoration of more than 80 historic structures in Newport, Rhode Island, since
1968. Included in the collection are important historical renderings of the James B. Duke
mansion in Newport and documentation of other colonial and early houses that illustrate
local architecture and also give insight into different restoration approaches over time, in
some cases spanning more than two centuries. The archival materials are used for the
foundation's publications and educational programming. Once it is fully preserved, the
collection would be more accessible to researchers from outside the organization with the
potential to contribute to our understanding of the social and cultural histories of the
Newport area and, more broadly, to the development of historic preservation in the
United States. The grant would also support a two-day archival training workshop for the
foundation's staff and the purchase of some preservation supplies.
North Kingstown
Smith's Castle Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Elaine Robinson
Project Title: Smith's Castle UV Window Film Project
Project Description: The purchase and installation of UV film protection for 12 windows
on the south side of Smith's Castle at Cocumscussoc, a historic house museum dating
from 1678, one of the oldest in the state of Rhode Island. House tours for the general
public trace the history of Cocumscussoc as a trading post, its colonial settlement, and
the establishment of a plantation. Objects at risk from the damaging sunlight date from
the late 18th and early 19th centuries and include 90 pieces of furniture, six paintings,
numerous textiles, and over 100 household objects. A highlight of the collection is a
"Rhode Island Fall-Front Desk" that belonged to Beriah Brown, a direct descendant of
original "Castle" owner Richard Smith and the first elected sheriff of Washington County
in 1746. The collections support re-enactments and educational programs for adults and
school groups.
Providence
Nicola Denzey Lewis Outright: $42,000
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Brown University
Project Title: Against the Cult of the Saints: The Early Modern Invention of Late Antique
Rome
Project Description: A book-length history of the development of saint worship in early
Christian Rome.
SOUTH CAROLINA (3) $23,938
Edisto Island
Edisto Island Historic Preservation Society Outright: $11,938
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Gretchen Smith
Project Title: Edisto Island History Harvest: Unearthing the Buried Treasures of Sea
Island Culture
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: A presentation on the richness of local cultural heritage, as well as a
community digitization day to capture images, artifacts, and documents in the possession
of local residents. Building on the Edisto Island Historical Society's current efforts to
improve documentation of the history of the island's long-established African American
population, the project outreach and programing would target the African American
community. The public program would feature Mary Elliott, project historian for the
Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture,
presenting on the history of Edisto Island and the significance of the slave cabin donated
by the historical society to the Smithsonian. The digitization event would take place at a
local historically significant African American church and include a celebration of African
American influences on local culture through food, crafts, and history. Where permission
is granted, all digitized materials will be made public through the Edisto Island Historical
Society and Lowcountry Digital Library websites.
North Charleston
Charleston County Government, Records Division Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Haley Doty
Project Title: Preservation at the Charleston County Records Center: Preservation Needs
Assessment and Material Rehousing
Project Description: The hiring of a consultant to carry out a preservation needs
assessment and the purchase of preservation supplies to help preserve an extensive
collection of municipal records from the South Carolina Low Country. The holdings of
Charleston County include numerous official documents: probate court records,
marriage license registers, deed books, and plat maps. All told, the collection
encompasses 20,000 cubic feet of boxed records and 3,500 sets of bound and unbound
documents. They offer a rich source of information on community life, race relations,
and the family in coastal South Carolina. The project focuses on the preservation of the
oldest and most delicate paper-based materials, some of them dating to the period of
British colonial rule in South Carolina.
Spartanburg
Spartanburg County Public Libraries Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Steve Smith
Project Title: General Preservation Needs Assessment of Spartanburg County Public
Libraries' Archival Collections
Project Description: The hiring of a consultant to conduct a preservation assessment of a
large body of materials dealing with the history of the South Carolina upcountry. With
items dating as far back as the 1760s, the collection includes approximately 25,000
cartographic, architectural, and engineering drawings, much of it related to the textile
industry which came to dominate the region. The library also houses 10,000 photographs
and negatives dating from 1884 through the 1990s; 150 linear feet of business and
organizational records; 200 linear feet of manuscripts and correspondence from
prominent Spartanburg families such as the Du Pre Moseleys; and, finally, 300
audiovisual recordings and oral histories, including interviews related to the
displacement of a local African American neighborhood through urban renewal.
Scholars use these wide-ranging materials to research a variety of topics including
military and church history and the history of the civil rights movement. The collection
also serves genealogists and college students.
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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SOUTH DAKOTA (1) $11,987
Brookings
South Dakota State University Outright: $11,987
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Jessica English
Project Title: Preserving Historic Hobo Day
Project Description: The gathering, digitization, preservation, and appreciation of
materials related to "Hobo Day," a fall homecoming celebration at the South Dakota State
University. Held annually in Brookings since 1912, "Hobo Day" not only reflects the
history of the university but also demonstrates wider community response to political
and cultural changes in South Dakota, providing more than a century of
annual
snapshots of culture in the central Plains. This project would expand the documentation
of the Hobo Day celebration, currently known only through annual yearbooks, to include
a wealth of other, community-held materials never systematically collected, including
flyers, buttons, newspaper clippings, personal photographs, and firsthand accounts.
Collected items would be preserved in digital form by the university libraries and made
available through an online exhibit; an accompanying lecture on the history of Hobo Day
would interpret the event in the context of regional history.
TENNESSEE (5) $163,200
Bristol
Birthplace of Country Music, Inc. Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: David Lewis
Project Title: Preservation Assessment for Audiovisual, Paper, and Photographic
Collections
Project Description: A preservation assessment of a country music collection consisting
of photographs, archives, and audiovisual materials. Totaling approximately 124 linear
feet, the museum's holdings include 10 cylinder recordings and 1,500 studio master
sound recordings, as well as a small collection of legacy audio playback machines,
microphones, and radio equipment. Collectively, the media document the evolution of
country musical forms and their cultural contexts and encompass a number of sub-
genres, such as old-time, hillbilly, bluegrass, and gospel. The collections provide an
important resource for scholars, community members, and visitors and are currently
used for research, in exhibitions, and for public programs, including an upcoming Ken
Burns documentary on country music.
Knoxville
Tore Olsson Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Project Title: The Shared Struggle to Remake the U.S. and Mexican Countryside in the
20th Century
Project Description: A book-length study of the interaction between U.S. and Mexican
efforts to modernize agriculture in the 1930s and 1940s, and their influence on the
attempt to modernize Third World agriculture during the Cold War.
University of Tennessee, Chattanooga Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Ruth Grover
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Title: Conservation of Collected Artworks on Paper at the University of Tennessee
at Chattanooga
Project Description: Hiring a consultant to perform an on-site assessment of the
University's works of art on paper. In addition to producing a preservation plan, the
consultant would provide a detailed conservation assessment of select objects and train
staff in the preservation of the collection. Particular attention would be given to works of
graphic design in the Weimer Pursell Archive, posters from Design Excellence: 50
Posters from the ‘80s, and individual prints donated by the Ackerman Foundation. The
applicant also requests funding for archival supplies which would be used to rehouse
posters and other artifacts.
Christine Shepardson Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Project Title: A Memory of Violence: The Radicalization of Religious Difference in the
Middle East (431-750 CE)
Project Description: The writing of a book-length history of the origins of the anti-
Chalcedonian Christian tradition in the context of religious conflict.
Nashville
Paul Kramer Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Vanderbilt University
Project Title: Immigration and American Power in the Long 20th Century
Project Description: A study of the relationship between U.S. foreign policy and
immigration policy from the 1890s to the present.
TEXAS (17) $1,686,793
Austin
Enrique Rodriguez-Alegria Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Texas, Austin
Project Title: The Material Worlds of 16th-Century Colonial Mexico City
Project Description: The writing of a book on the material culture of 16th-century Mexico
City.
Humanities Texas Match: $500,000
[Challenge Grants]
Project Director: Michael Gillette
Project Title: Endowment for Humanities Texas Teacher Professional Development
Program
Project Description: Endowment for teacher professional development programs in the
humanities.
Humanities Texas Outright: $12,000
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Michael Gillette
Project Title: East Texas History Harvest
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: The creation of a "community collection" of primary source
documents related to the local and regional history of East Texas with free, online access
to the collection via the Portal to Texas History, and an array of public programming
events, developed in partnership with local educational, historical, and cultural
institutions. Programming would include a traveling exhibition featuring the collected
material and a regional historical documentary produced by the Texas Archive of the
Moving Image. The East Texas History Harvest would be the third in a series of four pilot
programs organized by the applicant.
Humanities Texas Outright: $168,000
[Humanities in the Public Square]
Project Director: Michael Gillette
Project Title: Citizenship, Elections, and American Democracy
Project Description: A series of seven public forums across Texas and creation of
accompanying educational resources exploring pivotal U.S. presidential elections and
their relevance to the nation's current political culture.
Jill Robbins Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Texas, Austin
Project Title: We Were All on Those Trains: Poetry and the March 2004 Madrid Train
Bombing
Project Description: Completion of a book-length study of the poetry written in
response to the March 11, 2004, train bombings in Madrid, Spain.
Lorraine Pangle Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Texas, Austin
Project Title: Wisdom and Character: The Moral Foundations of Aristotelian Political
Philosophy
Project Description: A book-length study of the moral foundations of Aristotle's political
philosophy.
Bryan
Brazos Valley Museum of Natural History Outright: $1,000
[NEH on the Road]
Project Director: Deborah Cowman
Project Title: NEH on the Road: Bandits and Heroes, Poets and Saints
Dallas
Alexis McCrossen Outright: $42,000
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
Southern Methodist University
Project Title: A History of New Year's Observances in the United States, 1800-2000
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: A book-length study of the history of New Year's observances in the
United States.
Denton
University of North Texas Outright: $11,840
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Laura Treat
Project Title: Spotlight on North Texas
Project Description: A one-day digitization event to preserve moving-image-related
resources related to the history of Denton, Texas, which was a vibrant commercial and
amateur film community in the early to mid-20th century. Free, online access to the
digitized material would be available via the Portal to Texas History. Public programming
at venues across the state would be developed in collaboration with the Texas Archive of
the Moving Image (TAMI). Through public screenings and discussion events, an exhibit
on Texas media history, and the Web portal, the project would contextualize the
historical materials and prompt audiences to consider the cultural importance of
historical preservation, with a special emphasis on home movies and commercial films.
University of North Texas Outright: $95,599
[Humanities Open Book Program]
Project Director: Kevin Hawkins
Project Title: Broadening access to books on Texas and Oklahoma
Project Description: The digitization and creation of freely-accessible ebooks for 146
books on the history of Texas and Oklahoma. The books were selected by the University
of North Texas Press, the Oklahoma Historical Society, the Portal to Texas History, the
Texas State Historical Association, and the UNT Libraries Scholarly Publishing Services.
University of North Texas Match: $500,000
[Challenge Grants]
Project Director: Dreanna Belden
Project Title: NEH Challenge Grant to Support The Portal to Texas History Endowment
Project Description: Endowment to extend the reach of the Portal of Texas History
(PTH), which provides free public access to historical resources.
Houston
Altharetta Yeargin Art Museum Outright: $1,000
[NEH on the Road]
Project Director: Leann Newton
Project Title: NEH on the Road: Power of Children
Lynn Voskuil Outright: $50,400
[Awards for Faculty]
University of Houston
Project Title: Horticulture and Imperialism: The Garden Spaces of the British Empire,
1789-1914
Project Description: Research and writing leading to publication of a book on 19th-
century British garden design and its connections with British imperialism.
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Lynn Voskuil Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Houston
Project Title: Horticulture and Imperialism: The Garden Spaces of the British Empire,
1789-1914
Project Description: Research and writing leading to publication of a book on the
historical and literary relationship between British gardens and imperialism during the
long 19th century.
Keene
Southwestern Adventist University Outright: $1,000
[NEH on the Road]
Project Director: Chloe Northrop
Project Title: NEH on the Road: Power of Children
Kingsville
Texas A & M University, Kingsville Outright: $11,935
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Jonathan Plant
Project Title: Mi Familia - Mi Comunidad
Project Description: The creation of a collection of family records, photographs, and oral
histories specifically related to the Hispanic community of Kingsville, Texas. The seat of
rural Kleberg County, Kingsville is home to 25,000 residents, 80 percent of whom are
Hispanic. Building on Texas A&M Kingsville's successful Mi Familia – Mi Comunidad
initiative, this project would help community members better understand the value of
preserving family history. Hosted at the John E. Conner Museum in partnership with
South Texas Archive, Texas A&M staff archivists and students would assist participants
during the day-long collection event. Public programming would be held during Hispanic
Heritage Month and would include a scholar-led discussion and musical performances by
mariachis. Collected resources would be made available online and an exhibition would
be developed for display at the Conner museum throughout spring 2017. The exhibition
launch event would feature a historian who would discuss contributions by Hispanic and
Latino residents in the broader context of South Texas history.
San Antonio
Omar Valerio-Jimenez Outright: $42,000
[Awards for Faculty]
University of Texas, San Antonio
Project Title: The US-Mexican War (1846-1848): Mexican Americans, Memory, and
Citizenship
Project Description: The writing of a book on the legacy of memories about the Mexican-
American War among successive generations.
University of the Incarnate Word Outright: $98,819
[Humanities Initiatives: HSIs]
Project Director: Frederick Culverhouse
Project Title: Trauma: Conflict and Aftermath
Project Description: A series of faculty and curriculum development activities on the
subject of trauma.
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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UTAH (1) $1,000
Brigham City
Box Elder Museum Foundation, Inc. Outright: $1,000
[NEH on the Road]
Project Director: Kaia Landon
Project Title: NEH on the Road: Spirited
VERMONT (2) $31,189
Middlebury
Max Ward Outright: $25,200
[Fellowships for Advanced Research on Japan]
Middlebury College
Project Title: Ideological Conversion and Thought Reform in Interwar Japan
Project Description: Research and writing leading to publication of a book on the
Japanese state's efforts to reform political criminals in the 1930s.
Putney
Landmark College Outright: $5,989
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Mary Jane MacGuire
Project Title: Windham College Preservation Assessment Project
Project Description: A preservation assessment and the purchase of preservation supplies
to rehouse a collection of primary sources pertaining to Windham College, which
operated from 1951 to 1978 in Putney, Vermont, on the present-day site of Landmark
College. The project would also entail training in preservation practices for staff of the
Landmark College archives and nearby Putney Historical Society. The collection
comprises 30 linear feet of student newspapers, scrapbooks, photographs, school
yearbooks, and administrative records documenting Windham College's instructional
focus on modern art and the involvement of its faculty and students in counterculture
movements of the 1960s and 70s. Among the short-lived school's faculty and trustees
were authors John Irving and Pearl S. Buck.
VIRGINIA (8) $265,512
Ashland
Randolph-Macon College Outright: $5,375
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Laurie Preston
Project Title: Assessment of the Flavia Reed Owen Special Collections and Archives at
McGraw-Page Library
Project Description: A preservation assessment of the archives and special collections of
the college, the oldest Methodist-affiliated academic institution in the United States.
Totaling over 675 linear feet, the collection includes books, diaries, maps, photographs,
and artifacts pertaining to the history of the Methodist church in Virginia, and the nation
more generally, from colonial times to the present. Also contained are oral history
recordings focusing on the history of the college as well as a rare book collection that
holds the world's largest set of publications by and about Giacomo Casanova.
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Charlottesville
University of Virginia Outright: $29,587
[Digital Projects for the Public: Discovery Grants]
Project Director: Grace Hale
Project Title: Participatory Media
Project Description: A series of meetings and workshops that explore possible digital
platforms and approaches to bring to the public a curated set of community documentary
films from the 1960s and 1970s.
University of Virginia Outright: $126,797
[Humanities in the Public Square]
Project Director: Jane Kulow
Project Title: A State of Many Nations: Immigration and the Changing Face of Virginia
Project Description: A public forum at the Virginia Festival of the Book, statewide public
programs, and a teacher's guide explaining Latino American history in Virginia.
Christiansburg
Montgomery County Museum and Lewis Miller Art Center Outright: $10,213
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Samantha Parish
Project Title: The People, Places, and Things of Montgomery County, Virginia
Project Description: Three community digitization events held at the Montgomery-Floyd
Library, the Newman Library at Virginia Tech, and the Montgomery Museum in
Christiansburg, soliciting privately held resources documenting the history and culture of
Southwestern Virginia. The final event would coincide with the museum's yearly Heritage
Day celebration and feature a presentation to interpret selected objects contributed at the
events. The digitization events would also provide community members with information
on the basic care of their cultural objects. Archival preservation materials would be
available to attendees to protect fragile ephemera, documents, and photos. This project
would involve multiple community partners including staff and students from the
University Libraries at Virginia Tech.
Fairfax
Steven Barnes Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
George Mason University
Project Title: Gulag Wives: Women, Family, and Survival in Stalin's Terror
Project Description: The completion of a book on the women imprisoned in a Gulag
known as Alzhir, a forced labor camp in Soviet Kazakhstan, during Stalin's "Great Terror"
in the 1930s.
Richmond
City of Richmond Virginia Outright: $12,000
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Meg Hughes
Project Title: Nuestra Historia: The Latino Community in Richmond, Virginia
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Project Description: A series of community digitization events at several cultural heritage
organizations in Richmond, Virginia, that would invite members of the public to share
personal photographs, artwork, and other artifacts to document the history and culture
of the Latino community in the city. The curated digital copies would form the basis for
an exhibition entitled Nuestra Historia: The Latino Community in Richmond in 2017 at
the Valentine (Richmond's history museum). The City of Richmond Office of
Multicultural Affairs, Richmond Public Library, and the Sacred Heart Center for the
Latino Community would join with the museum to host Spanish-language events
throughout Richmond, including city tours, tours of the Valentine, bilingual community
conversations, story-gathering events, and opportunities for community members to
inform the cultural and creative design of the exhibit, Nuestra Historia.
Elizabeth Outka Outright: $25,200
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Richmond
Project Title: Raising the Dead: War, Plague, Magic, Modernism
Project Description: A book-length study of the literary response to the flu pandemic of
1918-1919.
Virginia Historical Society Outright: $5,941
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Rebecca Rose
Project Title: Rehousing the Small Objects in the General Museum Collection at the
Virginia Historical Society
Project Description: The rehousing of over 2,000 small objects such as arrows, pipes,
beads, buttons, fabric, jewelry, medical tools, political pins, and commemorative medals
that represent a broad cross-section of the history of the peoples of Virginia including
Native American cultures, the colonial period, the two World Wars, and 9/11.
WEST VIRGINIA (2) $6,994
Elkins
Davis and Elkins College Outright: $5,994
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Mary Jo DeJoice
Project Title: Preservation Assessment for the Special Collections at Davis & Elkins
College
Project Description: A preservation assessment of special collections related to the
cultural and natural history of Appalachia including the Augusta Collection of Folk
Culture, containing sound recordings, film, video, photographs, and cultural artifacts
documenting folk life and folk artists; the 300,000-item Comstock Collection of
materials from the career of newspaperman James Franklin Comstock; the Darby
Collection of 10,000 items documenting West Virginia history; and the College Archives.
Highlights include an unparalleled set of recordings of previously undocumented
traditional fiddlers, correspondence with Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl S. Buck,
hours of videotaped interviews documenting the Swiss "Helvetia" community in central
West Virginia, and 89 historic firearms. The library supports workshops, publications,
presentations, and research based on the collections. This would be the institution's first
preservation assessment.
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Monongah
Marion County Public Library Outright: $1,000
[NEH on the Road]
Project Director: Jessica Batten
Project Title: NEH on the Road: Our Lives, Our Stories
WISCONSIN (4) $72,452
De Pere
St. Norbert College Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Shan Bryan-Hanson
Project Title: Preservation Furniture and Supplies for St. Norbert College Art Galleries
and Collections
Project Description: The purchase of preservation furniture, environmental monitoring
equipment, and rehousing supplies as recommended in the Preservation Needs
Assessment survey completed in 2014 with NEH support. The St. Norbert College Art
Collection comprises approximately 1,000 works of art dating from the 13th century to
the present. Approximately 60 percent of the collection consists of works on paper, with
an emphasis on modern prints, drawings, and photographs. The remainder consists of
paintings, sculptures, ceramics, textiles, and decorative objects. Highlights include a
small collection of 20th-century Native American pottery, a painting by Salvador Dali,
and the complete portfolio suite of "Rainer Maria Rilke, For the Sake of a Single Verse"
by Ben Shahn.
Eau Claire
Chippewa Valley Museum Outright: $5,250
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Carrie Ronnander
Project Title: Preserving Collections at the Historic Schlegelmilch House
Project Description: The purchase of window shades, storage shelving equipment, and
re-housing supplies to preserve the collections in the Schlegelmilch House, a 1871 to 1906
merchant's home that reflects middle-class domestic life during Eau Claire's lumber
boom. Collection items include furniture made by Herman Schlegelmilch, the German
immigrant who built the house, an 1875 diary by 13-year-old Louise Schlegelmilch, and
paintings by regional artist S.O. Lund that were collected by the family. The house and
collections are central to this regional museum's interpretive programs for students,
including working with the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire's public history classes to
examine issues related to public programs, interpretation, historic preservation, and site
management.
Madison
Lisa Cooper Outright: $50,400
[Fellowships for University Teachers]
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Project Title: Ars Vivendi: The Poetics of Practicality in Late Medieval England
Project Description: Completion of a book-length study on the relationship between
medieval manuals of practical instruction and medieval English literature.
NEH Grant Offers and Awards,
December
2015
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Sheboygan
Mead Public Library Outright: $10,802
[Common Heritage]
Project Director: Debbra Voss
Project Title: Preserving the History of Sheboygan through Digital Images
Project Description: A series of community digitization events at several cultural heritage
organizations in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, to preserve personal photographs, letters,
memoirs, posters, artwork, and other privately-held sources documenting the history and
culture of the region. The materials would be made accessible via "Recollection
Wisconsin," a statewide digital repository that contributes content to the Digital Public
Library of America (DPLA). The applicant would also collaborate with the Sheboygan
County Historical Society and Museum to develop an exhibit that would featuring
selections from digitized sources and also host a six-part series of public lectures on local
history by the director of the Sheboygan Historical Research Center. Finally, the curator
of a local historic property, the Wade House, would offer a related set of public events
entitled "Restoring the Past," inviting visitors to participate in hands-on historic
restoration activities.
WYOMING (1) $6,000
Jackson
National Museum of Wildlife Art Outright: $6,000
[Preservation Assistance Grants]
Project Director: Adam Duncan Harris
Project Title: Providing a Preservation Needs Assessment for Wildlife Art
Project Description: Hiring a consultant to perform a general preservation assessment
of the collections and inform a renovation and reconfiguration of the collection storage,
galleries, and workspace areas of the museum. This first-time NEH applicant plans to
undertake a general conservation assessment of its 5,000 paintings, sculptures and other
formats representing wildlife art from 2,500 BCE to the present. The strengths are 19th-
and 20th-century American and European works, and show the evolution of perceptions
of American wilderness as well as its varied uses. The collections have supported several
recent scholarly publications, traveling exhibits, and educational programs, including
online curriculum-based art learning for teachers. The assessment would include an
analysis of the museum's environmental conditions and housekeeping, pest control, and
facility policies. The resulting preservation plan would inform the plan to renovate the
museum, which includes the creation of new workspaces for the care and preservation of
the collection.
