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
• Institutes
• The 20th Century Bible: Death
and Return of the Author - Yale
• The English Reformation:
Literature, History , and ArtOSU
• “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
• 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 Institutes
Participants
• 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
• $60,000 - $100,000
period between early
in outright funds for
June and mid-August
seminars
• Two types - for
• $100,000 - $170,000
school teachers and
for institutes
for college teachers • Criteria - intellectual
• Two formats quality and
seminars and
significance, impact,
institutes
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 for
College 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 Projects
Materials 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 research
two 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”