A three-year grant to create digital and curricular materials related to the university’s development and impact on its neighborhood.

Recovering Auraria's Past is a three-year collaborative project with faculty and community members designed to collect, organize, and share existing course materials and research on the history of the Auraria neighborhood in Denver, Colorado. The current Auraria campus in downtown was built in the 1970s through the razing of a Chicano neighborhood and the displacement of over 300 families. This project examines the lasting impact of this displacement at its 50-year anniversary by creating a website that includes primary and secondary documents along with syllabi and lesson plans available to instructors across three campuses. The project will take on additional collecting work, including oral histories and culminate with a digital tour of campus that focuses on displaced Chicano community members. It will also include a faculty and graduate student reading club and lecture series welcoming scholars who address the racial reckoning on American university campuses.

A three-year project to develop minor and certificate programs in museums, archives, and gallery studies.

The proposed project involves the development of a 15-credit certificate program and 12-credit minor in Museums, Archives, and Gallery Studies. Proposed courses in the program are grounded in Humanities and Arts curriculum, with the primary goal to prepare students to work in these spaces upon completion of the certificate or minor program or to be competitive when applying to graduate school.

A preparatory program and three discussion groups for 60 veteran and active-duty service members from Colorado Springs and surrounding areas.

To the Battlefield and Back Again: Conversations on War, Trauma, and Life After Service, seeks to facilitate an extended, community-based exploration of three themes: “Discourses on Going to War,” “The Modern Battlefield: Warfighters and Trauma,” and “Coming Home/Home Front.” Within each theme, we will consider the Trojan War, World War II, and Afghanistan/Iraq, enabling participants to situate and compare diverse military experiences across time and cultures. Leaders and participants in each thematically-based discussion group will come from the Colorado Springs civilian and veteran communities, and from the many active-duty service members and military-associated civilians who are housed in and around the military installations in the Colorado Springs/Pikes Peak region.

Planning for the reinterpretation of an 1850s U.S. Army fort in south-central Colorado.

History Colorado seeks funding for a Historic Places Planning Grant to fund a revised interpretive plan for the Fort Garland Museum and Cultural Center, located in the San Luis Valley of south-central Colorado. The interpretation will navigate the rich history of the region and explore the humanities themes of 1) environment has a cultural impact, 2) borderlands define and impact political and social history, 3) cultures influence the traditions of the region and have created layers of identity, and 4) engagement, activism, and community memory help to define the resilience of the borderlands.

Renovations in Colorado State University’s Andrew G. Clark building for the construction of a new Center for Engaged Humanities in Fort Collins, Colorado. 

The College of Liberal Arts at Colorado State University (CSU) seeks funding to support the renovation of space to house the newly-formed Center for Engaged Humanities. The Center renews the university’s land grant mission by engaging members of the public and community organizations as critical collaborators in humanities scholarship and programming designed to strengthen local, state, and regional democratic institutions and directly engage the needs of all Colorado residents. Operating as a humanistic thinktank and an engagement laboratory, the Center will match humanities expertise to community needs, train students and faculty in engaged scholarship best practices and model the humanities’ capacity to unite physical, cultural and human architectures in democratic decision making processes. As a highly visible, accessible campus portal devoted to serving the public, it likewise seeks to build trust and community investment in higher education institutions in the Intermountain West.

Research and preparation of a digital publication based on the computational analysis of Congressional hearing records to explore the history of group representation and lobbying between the mid-19th and later 20th centuries.

The United States Congress has historically held hundreds and even thousands of hearings a year to investigate societal problems and collect viewpoints on proposed legislation. This project aims to understand long-term patterns in representation at these hearings by conducting a large-scale computational analysis of hearings over the past 140 years using available metadata (hearings title, witness name, etc.) and the full text of hearings. The analysis will provide a birds-eye view as well as examine three case studies (labor, women, and the environment.) The final product will be a multifaceted digital book (using Scalar) aimed at scholarly and general audiences in equal measure. It constructs a narrative that engages scholarly arguments about lobbying and representation, but also offers a modular structure and multiple pathways that invite students and the general public to explore who and what Congress has paid attention to over the years.

Research and writing leading to a book that challenges the historical periodization of ancient Greece and the historical construction of Mycenaean Greece as a unified, homogeneous world in 1650-1075 BCE.

My book project, Reassembling Mycenaean Greece, ca. 1650-1075 BCE, proposes a new way of understanding the Mycenaean world, the name traditionally used to describe the archaeological culture of mainland Greece in the Late Bronze Age. I show that interpretations premised on its essential unity have failed to account for our evidence and demonstrate that they are also defective on theoretical grounds. I propose breaking its study down into specific practices whose histories can be traced temporally and spatially, and then reassembling these to produce rich, textured historical understandings. This approach contributes to recent postcolonial work in ancient history and archaeology by undermining the reductive role that Mycenaean Greece plays in discussions about the emergence of the citizen-based city-states of 1st millennium BCE Greece and productively resituates it in its broader Mediterranean context.

Writing of a book on the history of the American penal labor system during the late 20th century, including the attempts of incarcerated people to unionize. 

In the 1970s, American prisoners embarked on a historic push to unionize penal labor and reclassify their work as formal employment with all of the rights and protections that this entails. This expansive movement engaged in struggles with prison administrators, staff, and political actors nationwide. Yet, as their influence grew, so did the opposition they faced. By the decade’s end, a series of defeats at negotiation tables and in the courts withered prisoners’ ability to assemble against poor conditions and treatment. This set the stage for numerous punitive policy developments to come, including the rise of mass incarceration and the expansion of prison labor systems. Drawing on unique historical data from key prisoner organizations in this era, this project investigates the understudied yet instrumental history of this movement to reframe the nation’s captive workforce as not only protected workers but, indeed, as people in the eyes of prison officials, the courts, and the public.

Research and writing leading to a book on the cultural history of the German manufacturer Braun from the beginning of the Nazi regime through the 1970s in the Federal Republic of Germany. 

This project examines the history of the German manufacturer Braun and its canonical design style. Braun was a global pioneer in the use of modernist design in mass-produced consumer products, and the firm’s designs are held in museum collections around the world. Drawing on extensive archival research, I reconstruct the company’s troubling record during the National Socialist era, and I argue that its branding efforts and military production during World War II enabled its postwar success. My project contributes to scholarly and public debates about the tensions between past and present that shaped West Germany’s first decades, and it transforms the history of a design style that remains influential today. My project enriches the humanities through its study of design as an important way of establishing cultural values.

Research and writing leading to a book on the southern Pacific coast of Mexico between 1000 CE and 1700 CE.

The NEH Summer Stipend will support archival research in the Indigenous Chontal town of San Pedro Huamelula, Mexico. This will contribute to two chapters of my in-progress monograph, A World of Strangers: A Historical Archaeology of the Mexican Pacific Coast. Building on a critical reconfiguration of historical archaeology and a transhistorical perspective, the book focuses on the deep roots of long-term colonialism and incipient globalization on the Mexican Pacific coast. I argue that in order to fully understand these regional and global processes as a continuum, we must first reconstruct the Indigenous geopolitics in the region starting from the 11th through the 16th centuries, and which later laid the groundwork for European incursions and colonization. The book will highlight the Indigenous peoples’ impact on the transpacific world, and contribute to contemporary debates on Decoloniality and the Postcolonial critique, Indigenous agency, and re-writing alternative histories.

Research leading to a monograph on the history of the Prisoners Union, the largest union ever to represent the incarcerated population in the United States.

In the 1970s, American prisoners embarked on a historic push to unionize penal labor and reclassify their work as formal employment with all of the rights and protections that this entails. This expansive movement engaged in struggles with prison administrators, staff, and political actors. Yet, as their influence grew, so did the opposition they faced. By the end of the decade, a series of defeats at negotiation tables and in the courts withered prisoners’ ability to assemble against poor conditions and treatment. This set the stage for numerous punitive policy developments to come, including the rise of mass incarceration and the expansion of prison labor systems. Drawing on unique historical data from key prisoner organizations in this era, this project investigates the understudied yet instrumental history of this movement to reframe the nation’s captive workforce as not only protected workers but, indeed, as people in the eyes of prison officials, the courts, and the public.

Research and writing leading to a literary and historical account of Indian indentured laborers in the British Caribbean from the nineteenth century to today.  

My project offers a literary-historical account of the figure of the Indian indentured laborer or “coolie” in the British Caribbean. While contemporary scholarship reads the New World “coolie” as the product of a nineteenth-century racialized division of labor, I argue this figure is better understood through British imperial discourses on caste. Reading literary texts and colonial documents, I trace how this figure was discursively produced. Against narratives of the disappearance of caste in the Caribbean, I illuminate how Indian laborers negotiated their caste identities within the multiracial order of the plantation and examine new social formations that emerged through the interaction of race and caste. Restoring caste to the analysis of capitalism, my project demonstrates how social formations considered “unique” to India and incommensurable with colonial modernity were nonetheless harnessed to support racialized labor extraction in the transition from slavery to indentureship.

The project, “Why We Explore,” address what inspires humans to explore, from a cultural and social perspective.  With historic achievements in exploration now realized and new goals and frontiers emerging each day, the social, cultural, and economic impacts of space exploration on our daily lives are equally as important as the science and technology that support it. Further, with the Federal Government’s charge to reignite American’s space legacy and develop a unique branch of the military to protect it, now is the right time to reconvene a dialogue to ask, and more accurately answer the question, “Why do we explore?” This project will position the country’s ever-evolving attitudes toward space and exploration, in both the public and private sectors, in the larger context of similar attitudes visible throughout the world in a wide variety of cultures, with the goal of launching a larger dialogue about the role that space exploration plays in the human experience.

Planning for a traveling exhibition exploring the role of women in Maya visual culture, past and present, including a catalog and public programs.

The Denver Art Museum (DAM) seeks support for the development of a traveling exhibition, Queens to Comadres: Maya Women Then and Now (working title) co-curated by Dr. Victoria Lyall, Frederick and Jan Mayer Curator of the Art of the Americas at DAM, and Dr. Michelle Rich, the Ellen and Harry S. Parker III Associate Curator of Indigenous American Art at the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA). Queens to Comadres will focus on past and present visual culture featuring Maya women to offer an innovative exploration of their contributions to Maya societies and of their wider influence on Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. Queens to Comadres is planned to open in Fall 2026 at the DMA, and then travel to the DAM in early 2027. A full-color illustrated catalog, scholarly symposium resulting in an edited digital volume, and series of public engagement programs will accompany the exhibition.

Development of a free online OER (open educational resource) for teaching Spanish language using humanities collections and cultural experiences of Latinx in the US for all learners. 

Yo Soy Porque Tú Eres: recursos para el aprendizaje de Español en contexto (I Am Because You Are: resources for teaching Spanish in context) project will be a free digital platform that promotes U.S. Hispano/Latinx texts as resources to learn Spanish in the undergraduate classroom. The platform is organized around both themes of identity, trauma and resistance, and traditional knowledge and around skill levels. The platform provides digital pedagogical tools to allow students to not only analyze the texts, but to also tell their own stories in Spanish. We also encourage users to submit content and ideas to increase performance and robustness.

Research leading to the revision of an intensive Spanish grammar review course for heritage speakers.

This project will research and analyze Spanish toponymy in Colorado including the place-names of cities, counties and geographical accidents. Rather than creating a list of names in order to collect information about the origin and meaning of each (as could be expected from a more traditional etymological or taxonomic study), the project will instead focus on how place-names practices and politics have produced spaces imbued with cultural significance and social power. Therefore, the toponymic study of Colorado Spanish places will be approached from a historical, political and personal point of view. I plan to use the collected materials, sources and subsequent research to revise and improve one of the intermediate grammar courses I usually teach by providing a cultural and historical thematic thread to the class SPA 2750-Intensive Spanish Grammar Review, a class initially created for Spanish heritage speakers that is offered year-round.

Hiring two pre-professional, post-baccalaureate apprentices from communities underrepresented in the archives and preservation professions to work in the Special Collections and Digital Archives Department of the Denver Public Library for two years.

Denver Public Library (DPL) proposes Bridging the Gap: Post-Baccalaureate Apprenticeships for Underrepresented Populations in Archives (Bridging the Gap), which will recruit and hire two pre-professional, post-baccalaureate apprentices.  We will prioritize underrepresented populations in archives and preservation professions for this program. We encourage those who identify as Black, Indigenous and/or people of color (BIPOC) and/or those who are first generation college graduates to apply. Over their two-year apprenticeship, they will have exposure to core archival and preservation functions and decision-making to advance the discovery, access and use of archival records included in historically important humanities collections in DPL’s Special Collections and Digital Archives Department. Through this project, apprentices will learn to process (i.e., perform collections assessment, arranging and describing of) collections for which they have a personal affinity; apply basic preservation treatments; and create finding aids (metadata) for digitized materials. To ensure that other libraries and archival institutions can learn from this project, DPL will partner with the Society of American Archivists (SAA) to disseminate a report about how DPL implemented the project, as well as the project’s evaluation outcomes related to apprentices’ professional skill development and the impact of the project on access to the humanities collections that will be improved through Bridging the Gap.

An implementation project to sustainably rehouse a collection of 500,000 artifacts from the WS Ranch Archaeological Project, an Upland Mogollon Pueblo site (occupied ca. 800 to 1300 CE) located in New Mexico and excavated from 1977 to 1994.

The WS Ranch Archaeological Project (WSRAP) Collection is an important and irreplaceable assemblage of approximately 500,000 artifacts of Late Pithouse, Classic Mimbres, and Tularosa Phase material cultures. Excavated decades ago near Alma, west central New Mexico, by the University of Texas at Austin, the unprocessed, uncataloged collection has never been fully accessible to researchers and tribal representatives. Recently acquired by DMNS, the WSRAP Collection is being moved from substandard collections storage conditions in Texas to Denver prior to the project period. NEH funds will enable project staff, volunteers, and interns to sustainably preserve and install the WSRAP collection in the Museum’s state-of-the-art collections facility. Dissemination strategies will make the collection accessible to professionals and a variety of museum audiences, including tribes.

Hiring a consultant to conduct a preservation risk assessment and train staff in emergency preparedness, toward the goal of developing an emergency plan for the Francisco Fort Museum, which is located in an area prone to wildfires and severe flooding.

Francisco Fort Museum (Fort) is asking for a grant to pay for a consultant to provide a comprehensive risk assessment that would identify the most common and consistent risks which will allow us to develop mitigation and preparedness efforts to reduce those risks. Our hope is that the assessment will give the museum a wholistic view of the museum and its collection and the risks faced by both. The consultant will have an initial meeting with the Fort Board and Staff and will spend several days at the Fort. The work will culminate in a tabletop activity with staff and board members participating in an emergency exercise. A draft risk assessment will be provided for review and a final draft will be completed within one to two months of the first draft.

The development of a collections care policy and environmental monitoring program, as well as the purchase of environmental monitoring equipment and supplies, for a collection documenting the mining industry in the United States.

Support for the National Mining Hall of Fame and Museum planning which includes hiring a consultant to write and implement an Environmental Monitoring Program and develop a Preservation and Collections Care Policy. With the professional recommendations, the Museum will purchase lead and asbestos testing kits and install analog data loggers for environmental monitoring in an effort to preserve and care for the Museum's collections long term.

Research and preparation of a dataset of the texts and metadata of Congressional hearing records to analyze the history of group representations and lobbying between the mid-19th and later 20th centuries. 

Planning and holding a conference on the roles of radio and listening in processes of decolonization in subaltern communities. (12 months)

This collaborative research convening project on radio and decolonization brings together an international cohort of scholars to produce and publish scholarship that will help radio archivists and producers, as well as scholars and students in a range of academic disciplines, to better understand and communicate the roles of radio broadcasting and listening in processes of decolonization. Its primary activity is to organize and host an interdisciplinary conference, which will include scholars with different points of view working in diverse fields including literary studies, music, history, sociology, anthropology, and media studies. The conference will be advertised to the public with attendance free of charge. Final outcomes include disseminating the conference via live streamed video, which will be recorded and uploaded to YouTube and linked to the conference website; paper abstracts; and short videos of the participants discussing the primary sources and material objects.

General operating support for state or territorial humanities council

Colorado Humanities will continue to work toward meeting the goal of integrating the humanities into public life in Colorado through objectives stated in the 2019-2023 plan: 1. Engage Colorado communities in important conversations about contemporary issues that reflect diverse narratives. 2. Provide humanities-based opportunities to encourage lifelong learning. 3. Develop programs that recognize racial, ethnic or cultural diversity. 4. Develop programs with geographic diversity with emphasis on issues of import to rural Coloradans. 5. Develop programs that employ as broad an array of humanities disciplines as possible. 6. Build partnerships to promote collaboration with existing and prospective program partners statewide. 7. Increase Colorado Humanities' financial capacity and resources to achieve objectives. 8. Use a range of technologies to deliver and promote programs.

No project description available

Training four staff members in public interpretation and development of new interpretive content on Indigenous history. 

This two-year project would lead four staff through training and certification programs with the National Association for Interpretation and position our team as trainers of heritage area interpretation for volunteers and other partner entities. The project also includes an Inclusive Stories Research Intern who will be working to uncover stories related to our newly identified under-told themes.