National Endowment for the Humanities

An Overview of Programs

The Humanities• History, Literature, Political

Science, Law, Sociology, Philosophy, Religious Studies,

Languages, Multicultural Studies, Women’s Studies, Sociology,

Psychology, Art, Music, Drama, Film, Linguistics, Archaeology, Anthropology, Communication

Studies

NEH Programs• Summer Seminars and Institutes for school or

college teachers - participant• Directing Summer Seminars or Institutes• NEH Fellowships for College Teachers• Summer Stipends for College Teachers• Education and Development Grants including

Teaching with Technology• NEH Focus Grant• Challenge Grants• Preservation and Access• Cooperative Research

Summer Seminars & Institutes

Directors and Participants

Description• Seminars

– for college teachers - 15 participants with related interest conduct research under the direction of an expert

– for school teachers - explore a topic or set of readings with a scholar having special interest and expertise in the field.

• Institutes– for college teachers - focus

on a topic of major importance in the undergrad curriculum, team of scholars and 25-35 participants

– for school teachers - taught by a team of core faculty and visiting scholars, is designed to present the best scholarship on important humanities issues. 25-35 participants

Examples of 1999 Summer Seminars and

Institutes• Seminars• The 20th Century Bible: Death

and Return of the Author - Yale

• The English Reformation: Literature, History , and Art- OSU

• “The Marvels of Rome”: The Classical City in the Middle Ages - Bryn Mawr

• Reading Ethically, Reading Aesthetically: American Texts as Moral Example - Princeton

• Morality and Society - BU

• Institutes• The Civil Rights Movement:

History and Consequences - Harvard

• New Sources and Findings on Cold War International History - GWU

• Anglo-Saxon England -WMU• Authority, Text, and Context in

Nineteenth-Century Spanish Realism - Duke

• Memory, History, and Dictatorship: The Legacy of World War II in France, Germany, and Italy - Texas A&M

Example - Seminar• Guided by a literature scholar, fifteen school

teachers gather at a private college to read Dante’s Commedia and to use it as a lens for studying the medieval world. Over the five-week period, seminar participants immerse themselves in the poem, and drawing on additional reading of relevant primary works - - such as the Aeneid and Augustine’s Confessions --and secondary materials, take turns leading discussions of specific cantos. Journal entries synthesize the participants’ examination of the Middle Ages and lay the groundwork for presentations at future professional meetings.

Example - Institute

• An interdisciplinary six-week summer institute explores the environmental imagination and its literary expression in the US. Topics include the Thoreauvian tradition, wild versus domestic visions of nature, the place of “place” in literature, and the past and future of nature writing. The institute is designed to study imaginative literature and the genre’s connections with the natural sciences, and combines presentations by science lecturers, working authors, and humanities scholars. The 25 college and university faculty have backgrounds in American literature, American studies and related fields ranging from environmental studies to art history.

Seminars and InstitutesParticipants

• DEADLINE: March 1, 1999

• Between $2,800 and $3,700.

• 15 participants working in collaboration with one or two leading scholars.

• 23 seminars and institutes

• Access to major library collection with time reserved to pursue individual research.

To Be A Participant• Request application material directly

from seminar director• Apply Directly to Seminar Director• List of 1999 seminars is available• Short application - usually 5 pages• Must describe a research area that

relates to the seminar• Awards made to individual, not

institution

To Be a Director

• Four - Six week period between early June and mid-August

• Two types - for school teachers and for college teachers

• Two formats - seminars and institutes

• $60,000 - $100,000 in outright funds for seminars

• $100,000 - $170,000 for institutes

• Criteria - intellectual quality and significance, impact, feasibility

Application Process - Director

• Deadline: March 1• 15 pages + required forms and

appendices• Double spaced• 2 letters of recommendation• Award is made to the institution and

must be signed by the institution

NEH Fellowships

For College Teachers

NEH Fellowships forCollege Teachers and Independent Scholars

• DEADLINE: May 1, 1999, Notification by early December, project can begin Jan. 1

• contribute to scholarly knowledge, advancement of teaching, or general public’s understanding of humanities

• Does not support: curriculum, empirical educational research, or theories of teaching and learning that lack humanities content.

• Part-time or full -time faculty or non-teaching capacity• Uninterrupted period of six to twelve months must

include one full term of academic year. • 6-12months = $30,000; 5 mos.$25,000; 4 mos. =

$20,000; can be supplemented by the institution up to full salary

NEH Summer Stipends

Humanities Research

NEH Summer Stipends• DEADLINE: Oct. 1, 1999 (notification by April,

2000 - project can begin May 1)• Must be nominated by college - may nominate

two members, one of whom should be junior nominee (instructor or assistant professor).

• Adjunct faculty, non faculty staff and applicants with appointments terminating by the summer of 2000 may apply without nomination.

• Degree candidates are not eligible• Not eligible if have held a major fellowship or

research grant during 1997-98 or subsequent years.

Application Process• Cover sheet• Resume - 2 page

outline• proposed study

description - 3 single-space or six double-space pages

• two reference letters on forms sent directly by authors

• Translation projects - 2 page sample - 1 pg original, 1 pg applicant’s translation

• Database projects - sample entry on single page showing the proposed format and contents

• 1 page bibliography

NEH Focus Grant

Meeting Institutional Priorities

Focus Grant• DEADLINE: April 15 - project may

begin Sept. 1, 1999• Enables a group of teachers, faculty

members or other educators to work together to explore an important humanities topic and to consider plans of action for their institution, use outside experts

• $10,000 - $25,000

Purposes

• Enable groups of faculty to engage in rigorous collegial study with reference to larger institutional purposes or specific curricular issues.

• May support a further stage of collegial work: design and development of new institutional arrangements for humanities education or major changes in the curriculum.

• Allows faculty to work in collaboration with school teachers

• Focused curriculum development with faculty development as well

Examples of Focus Grants• To support a humanities focus grant on infusing issues on

diversity into the humanities curriculum• To support a summer workshop and follow-up activities

on African and African American art and culture for teachers in South Bend schools

• To support an academic year workshop to bring together faculty and school district teachers to develop an articulated literature-based K-16 curriculum for native speakers of Spanish

• A Foundation course for University Studies; Introducing Higher Education to First-Year Students through American Studies

• Ethics Across the Curriculum - one year faculty and curriculum development project

Design

• Identify a coherent sequence of topics or issues to be explored and provide a detailed list of texts and materials to be considered.

• Demonstrate a commitment from participating groups and individuals

• Potential for national significance

Ideas for Whitworth

Education Development and Demonstration Grants

National Education ProjectsMaterials Development

Curricular Development and Demonstration

Teaching with Technology

National Education Projects

• DEADLINE: October 15, 1999 with projects beginning May 2000• Interested in Teaching with Technology Focused Projects• Curricular Development and Demonstration

– prepare, implement and evaluate new or revised curricular changes that will serve as national models or pilot programs.

– Particularly like projects which are collaborative and strive to improve the preparation of future humanities teachers

• Materials Development– interactive software that will have a significant impact on

humanities instruction– not textbooks– sourcebooks or teaching guides– usually a collaborative project

Examples

• The Spanish Colonial Mission Virtual Museum

• Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age: Reconceptualizing the Introductory Survey Course

• Virtual Japan: An Interactive Multimedia Exploration of Japanese Culture

• The Archives of Traditional Music and New Technology: Musical Instruments of West Africa - CD-ROM

• Visual Sourcebook of Chinese Civilization

• Literature-based Partnerships Between Middle/High School Teachers and Higher Education Faculty

• U.S. Women’s Progressive Era History on the World Wide Web

• Teaching Medieval Lyric with Modern Technology: New Windows on the Medieval World

Challenge Grants

Institutional Initiatives

Challenge Grants

• Library endowment, chair endowment• Requires at least 3 dollars to be raised in

new or increased donations for every federal dollar offered.

• Example; NEH award = $200,000; Match = $600,000

• DEADLINE: May 1• Can begin raising matching funds the

December before submitting application and have three years to raise match.

Examples

• Faculty Fellows Fund for Medieval and Irish Studies and acquisitions for Northern Medieval Vernacular Literature

• Endowment and Equipment costs for new technology center in library

• Endowment of lecture series & a scholars-in-residence• To support endowment for academic and public

humanities programming & for research related to the International Quilt Study Center

• Endowment to continue and expand the college’s public lecture series and faculty development seminars

• Endowment for a program of distinguished visiting professors in the Center for the Study of Cultures.

Preservation and Access

Create, preserve, and increase resources that assist

research, education, and public programming

Types of Projects• Special Collections and Archives

– bibliographic control; arrangement, description, and preservation of archival and manuscript collections; cataloging and preservation of graphics; still and moving images; and recorded sound collections

– Develop oral history collections of cultural importance

• Research Tools and Reference Works– create dictionaries, encyclopedias, historical or linguistic

atlases, databases, textbases, bibliographies, etc.

• National Heritage Preservation Program• Preservation Microfilming of Brittle Books

and Serials

Collaborative Research

Original researchtwo or more scholars

Description• DEADLINE: September 1, 1999• Because of scope or complexity

requires additional staff• Research leading to scholarly

publications breaking new ground

• Full or part time for up to 3 yrs.• Support for scholars,

consultants, travel, and technical support

• $10,000 - $200,000 with matching

• No textbooks, or research in educational methods

• Editions of works or documents that are of value to humanities scholars and general readers - previously not accessible or inadequate

• Conferences addressing a specific set of research objectives on a topic of major significance to the humanities

• Annotated translations into English of works that provide insight into history, literature philosophy and scientific and artistic achievements of other cultures

Examples• Two scholars will complete

an edition of the correspondence of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. They will publish the results as a complete and fully transcribed CD-ROM edition, with notes identifying correspondents, dating letters, and clarifying textual irregularities. Database will be searchable by key word

• Two scholars of Chinese history propose an international conference on the social, economic and cultural aspects of the history of printed books in late imperial and early modern China. Firm commitments from scholars who will focus on impact of commercial publishing and marketing on levels of literacy, classification of knowledge, and creation of common culture for different ethnic and linguistic groups.

NEH on the web

•http://www.neh.gov

The NEH

“To promote progress and scholarship in the humanities

and the arts in the United States”