A two-year project to expand the French and Spanish curriculum to include refugee and immigrant studies. 

We propose to develop advanced French and Spanish courses with high-impact practices and humanities sources that will prepare students to work with refugees and immigrants–populations in which our students are showing interest. We also propose faculty development workshops that will: train humanities faculty and others to incorporate oral history projects into their courses and create open educational resource (OER) textbooks; educate them on refugees and immigrants in the U.S.; and guide them in the application of place-based theories. We will develop a robust curriculum and a collection of primary documents (oral histories) for our Spanish and French courses that will be used by Mercer faculty and freely shared as an OER. We will claim a place for the humanities in an area of study that already attracts students to majors in Global Health and related fields.

A two-year program of book discussions, field trips to museums, concerts, and historical sites as well as related creative activities on the theme of strength from adversity for twenty-five General Education Development students paired with twenty-five Albany State University undergraduate adult learners.

The idea of “strength from adversity” is a central theme in the Humanities and it is expressed within great works of literature, art, music, history and philosophy. The underlying theme of our project, reflected in the selected readings and activities, is one of understanding and overcoming adversity. Our project impacts students actively working on earning their General Educational Development (GED) and others that are currently enrolled in college, who have been sidetracked by adversity, such as poverty. By pairing the students, and then introducing them to literature, performing arts, fine arts, and history, our program enhances their capacity to better understand their experiences and how those experiences are often shared by others. In addition, authors that have overcome adversity will share their stories and lead book discussions.

Curricular improvements to an oral history course focused on African American women from the rural and small-town South, as well as archival preservation of interviews with these community elders.

In August of 2002, students at Spelman College were introduced to The SIS Oral History Project, a new course that would: (1) open the lens of age in studies of history and literature; (2) identify oral history as a major methodology for research in the humanities; and (3), through student-conducted interviews, give voice and visibility to African American women elders of the South. That “new course” is, today, a demanding project that transforms teaching and learning in the humanities. The project meets criteria for NEH funding for Humanities Initiatives at HBCUs in the following ways: (1) it strengthens students’ skills in writing, critical thinking, oral articulation, and research across disciplines; (2) through a partnership with AUC Robert W. Woodruff Library Archives Research Center, it insures that project research will be preserved and disseminated for use in humanities courses across the nation; and (3) it produces age-conscious scholars for the twenty-first century.

A humanities bridge program over two summers for selected high school students on the history, literature, art, and music of the Civil Rights Movement.

"Albany, Georgia: Gateway to the National Civil Rights Struggle" is a two-year project at Albany State University (ASU) supporting a humanities summer bridge program for students from Dougherty and nearby counties in Southwest Georgia. The project allows under-achieving students to learn about the history, literature, art, and music of the Civil Rights Movement. Under the leadership of project director Marva Banks (African-American, African, and Caribbean literature), the program engages tenth and eleventh graders in the study of the Civil Rights Movement, focusing on the catalytic Albany Movement (1961-1963), a collective protest against Jim Crow laws that laid the foundation for subsequent demonstrations in the South and throughout the nation. The project's goals are to improve the participants' critical reading, writing, and communications skills; to lead students in an examination of the history, art, and music of the era; and to involve them in collecting oral histories of surviving participants in the Albany Movement. "ASU alumni helped launch the Albany Movement," notes the project director, "while other activists joined students at Albany State . . . to advance the cause of Civil Rights." During each of two summers, twenty-five students spend six weeks learning about this important history. They study, for example, the role of Charles M. Sherrod, now on the history faculty at ASU and available for interview, as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) who "helped lead the charge against segregation laws and policies in the city"; and that of former ASU student Bernice Johnson Reagon (Sweet Honey in the Rock) as one of the original Albany "Freedom Singers." They read works by Frederick Douglass, James Weldon Johnson, Rudolph Fisher, Ernest J. Gaines, Maya Angelou, Robert Frost, and Amy Tan, as well as study Billie Holiday's rendition of "Strange Fruit," an anti-lynching piece. They also travel to Montgomery and Selma, Alabama, and Atlanta, Georgia, to visit other sites related to the Civil Rights Movement in addition to those visited in Albany.

Continued employment of staff to create curriculum and virtual field trips for grades 3-12, along with digitized museum exhibits for the general public.

Six-month project to develop two public virtual field trips focused on Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement. Project team will also develop virtual learning training materials for staff and community partners, and digitize and make publicly accessible relevant archival materials.

A one-year project to plan a new minor in humanities and data, incorporating content from philosophy and data science

Agnes Scott College (ASC), a private liberal arts college for women in Decatur, Georgia, requests support for the “Exploring the Ethics of the Digital Transformation” project that will focus on exploring ethical questions involved in the use of data while developing a new minor degree focused on the digital humanities. The three goals of the project will be to (1) demonstrate the practical relevance of the humanities to evolving professional needs, (2) attract more students to the humanities, and (3) strengthen the intellectual and working relationships between the humanities and data science fields. Toward those goals, the project team will engage in the work necessary to develop, launch, and promote a new Humanities and Data minor degree program that will bring together courses relevant to data analysis and communications and those focused on understanding the ethical implications of using data.

To compose a book about the experiences acrued while presenting Exiles in the House througout America.

The development of an introductory level undergraduate course that charts a three-part historical trajectory from ancient Sumerian and Greek texts to twentieth-century thought.

Of Human Finitude asks how does one live a life that ends? In a multifaceted approach to this question crossing disciplines, cultures, and genres, the course examines the quest for immortality in the ancient world, the role of finitude as condition for human relationships in the 17th-19th century, and the prospect of a more properly finite immortality through works of remembrance (the grave, the literary work, and the archive) in the 20th century. The course is complemented by a field trip to historic Oakland Cemetery, a guided tour of Alice Walker's literary archive, and a parallel running film series. This course is an introductory course without prerequisites. The Emory Philosophy department's undergraduate curriculum is currently under revision and this course would be the first of a new line of introductory courses integrating the history of philosophy within the larger conversation of the Humanities and providing more varied access to philosophy at the undergraduate level.

The development of an undergraduate seminar on the question, What does it mean to be free?

What does it mean to be free? This course aims to expose undergraduate students to the works of diverse individuals ranging from philosophers, playwrights, novelists, and political dissidents who have provided competing and incomplete answers to this question. The readings will present students with competing voices exploring the tensions between individuals and society, and will be structured around ancillary questions: Should individuals pursue truth and knowledge even in the face of mortal danger from authorities? Is there a social arrangement that nurtures, protects, and enhances individuality while promoting and maintaining a strong sense of community and order? Do individuals owe obedience to God, authority, society, each other, or what? How can individuals maintain their freedom, their individuality, their autonomy under some of the most repressive and dehumanizing conditions? What actions can help individuals free themselves from oppression, while resolving the tension between

The development of an upper-level undergraduate seminar on ideas about how to attain and secure peace, open to cadets and civilian students at a military college.

The development of an upper-level undergraduate seminar on ideas about how to attain and secure peace, open to cadets and civilian students at a military college. Four faculty members develop an upper-level seminar open to all students on the enduring question, What is peace? In addition to the question of what constitutes peace, the subject involves the additional consideration of whether peace should be established and maintained whatever the cost, or if it should be constrained by attempts to achieve justice. In order to address these questions, the course considers classic authors and works from western and eastern traditions, including Thucydides, Aristophanes, Sun Tzu, the Song of Roland, Christine de Pizan, Erasmus, Shakespeare, the Abbe St. Pierre, Rousseau, Kant, Clausewitz, Gandhi, Mao Zedong, and Kurt Vonnegut, plus modern scholars and theorists including Hannah Arendt, Michael Howard, and Michael Doyle. The participating faculty members include Renee Bricker (early modern history), Donna Gessell (English), Michael Proulx (ancient history), and Yi Deng (philosophy); course preparation allows each to expand his or her academic perspectives. The course itself meets once a week for two and a half hours in seminar format; it also takes advantage of electronic media to post weekly student "talking-papers" and facilitate intellectual interchange outside the classroom. The students are also expected to present papers at the college's undergraduate research conference and revise them for an undergraduate journal.

A graduate course to prepare Emory students to lead discussions for veterans, followed by their facilitation of four parallel discussion series on the experiences of war read through The Aeneid and selected works on the Vietnam War.

Emory University proposes to organize a program of discussion groups that will meet five times. In Talking about Service, participants will explore aspects of the concept of duty from wars in ancient Rome to World War II and Vietnam through a close reading of Virgil's Aeneid, transcriptions from interviews of veterans collected over the past ten years in Georgia, and other historical documents. They will also discuss readings from the anthology Standing Down: From Warrior to Civilian and Bloods: Black Veterans of the Vietnam War: An Oral History by Wallace Terry. A discussion leader preparation program will draw on the expertise of Emory faculty. A distinctive feature of this application is the institutional context, which includes a vibrant Humanities Center and significant relationships with regional Veterans Administration services, the Centers for Disease Control, and an extensive network of health and wellness programming designed specifically for veterans.

The applicant requested a Chairman's grant of $24,850 to run a two-day in-service workshop that focuses on the images and themes of Picturing America (PA), together with the PA Teachers Resource Book. The workshop, taking place in Spring 2009, will serve approximately 175 teachers and librarians from the Atlanta Public Schools, which have adopted PA system-wide. The teachers will be drawn from arts, humanities, and social studies fields, with the goal of advancing instruction in American history, civics, government, literature, and culture. The distinguished American collection of the High Museum of Art will receive attention for its relevance to the PA portfolio. However, the primary emphasis and the majority of time will be spent on actual PA reproductions and the Teachers Resource Book. The workshop presenters, who are well-established humanities scholars from Atlanta universities, will impart rich humanities content and background knowledge to participants. Training in basic visual analysis of art objects will be included. The themes of Picturing America-Leadership, Freedom and Equality, Democracy, Courage, Landscape, Creativity and Ingenuity-will inform presentations and discussions; and the workshop will devote approximately equal attention to works chronologically. The NEH Chairman's Grant of $24,850 will cover the total budget for running this workshop, including modest teacher stipends and working lunches, speakers' honoraria, and museum staff and facilities.

Teachers and librarians from the Atlanta Public school district will attend a Picturing America training institute in May 2009 at the high Museum of Art. Teachers will learn how to use the resource in their classroom. the course will be taught through lectures, group and individual lessons and gallery tours.

Distribution of a poster/history timeline to teachers, strengthening of the National History Day in Georgia program, the 2006 theme of which is "Taking a Stand in History," and a regrant program targeted to adults.

Through “We the People in Georgia, 2005”, the Georgia Humanities Council will distribute a poster/history timeline to teachers that highlights the New Georgia Encyclopedia and the Digital Library of Georgia, two electronic resources. The Council will also strengthen its National History Day in Georgia program (which has the theme “Taking a Stand in History” for 2006) through the development of materials and through outreach at conferences and workshops. Additionally, the Council will support public programs through regrants, in order to reach adult community members.

Reading and discussion programs in Georgia communities, the development of resource and training materials to accompany the tour of the exhibition, "Key Ingredients: America By Food," and additional content for the "New Georgia Encyclopedia."

We the People in Georgia 2006 will include 14 reading and discussion programs in Georgia communities, in partnership with the Georgia Center for the Book. It will also enhance the content of the New Georgia Encyclopedia. The project will also support the development of resources and training materials to support the Museum on Main Street exhibition tour “Key Ingredients: America By Food”

The creation of partnerships to sponsor programs that will engage out of school, adult Georgians in learning and reflecting on significant themes in American history and culture. Project components will include teacher professional development, library/literacy programs, community discussions/civic reflection events, and online reference work.

We the People in Georgia 2009 From July 1, 2009 until December 31, 2010, the Georgia Humanities Council will carry out partnerships to sponsor programs that will engage out of school, adult Georgians in learning about and reflecting on significant themes in American history and culture. Project components will include teacher professional development, library/literacy programs, community discussions/civic reflection events, and an online reference work.

No project description available

Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers on southern segregation and the civil rights movement in Atlanta.

At the core of the workshop is the weighty issue of race reform in a contested southern past. Atlanta, destroyed in the Civil War, was rebuilt on the ashes of slavery as a New South city where memorials to the Old South became symbols of white supremacy that relegated African Americans to legal and economic second-class status. The struggle of resistance follows from W. E. B. Du Bois to Martin Luther King. Atlanta has an ideal nexus of historic sites where teachers can explore these struggles, from the legacy of slavery, the tragedy of war and defeat, the promise of emancipation, the betrayal of Reconstruction, the terror of redemption and race riot, the erection of the color line and resistance to segregation, the civil rights movement, desegregation, integration and re segregation, to a multicultural and pluralistic society. Participants will see how race relations figured into the landscape as Americans who once venerated the civil war dead now memorialize civil rights martyrs.

Two one-week workshops for 72 school teachers about the history and culture of the Cherokee people.

The Funk Heritage Center of Reinhardt University, located in the town of Waleska in northwestern Georgia, proposes a new National Endowment for the Humanities Landmarks of American History and Culture workshop for K-12 teachers, especially grades 3 through 12, titled The Trail of Tears: Context and Perspectives. The goals of the workshop are to (1) heighten awareness of 19th-century Cherokee removal from the Southeastern U.S.; (2) give K-12 teachers the tools they need to teach this portion of their social studies and/or history curricula effectively; and (3) highlight voices and perspectives from the period – particularly Cherokee voices – to tell the story. Participants will visit several key Cherokee landmarks and engage with a wide range of museum artifacts, Native American art, claims for damages filed by the Cherokees, newspapers from the time period, recorded eyewitness testimony, Cherokee myths and stories, and other resources.

Two one-week workshops exploring Gullah-Geechee history and culture in the Lowcountry of Georgia and South Carolina.

This workshop focuses on the history and cultural legacy of Gullah-Geechee people of South Carolina and Georgia, descendants of enslaved people from the West Coast of Africa, who contributed to making America “A More Perfect Union,” even as they were excluded from its benefits. The Gullah-Geechee preserved more of their African traditions than other groups of early enslaved Africans in the U.S. As a result, the Gullah-Geechee people’s history, stories, beliefs, and traditions are central to the establishment of African American cultural institutions and practices, and therefore critical to understanding American society in general. The institution of slavery and the contributions of the enslaved and their descendants is foundational to the formation of the U.S. and has long been undertaught and over-simplified in K-12 curriculum. This place-based workshop grounds teachers with a scholarly understanding of (1) how African Americans, free and enslaved, have strived to realize the nation’s ideal that “all men are created equal” in possession of liberty and certain rights, and (2) how the Gullah-Geechee people, who worked over four centuries to preserve their culture, contributed to this democratic ideal.

Two one-week residential programs for 72 K-12 educators on the civil rights movement and desegregation in Atlanta.

At the core of the workshop is the weighty issue of race reform in a contested southern past. Atlanta, destroyed in the Civil War, was rebuilt as a “New South” city where memorials to the Old South became symbols of white supremacy that relegated African Americans to legal and economic second-class status. The struggle of resistance begins with Atlanta University and continues to W. E. B. Du Bois to Martin Luther King. Atlanta has an ideal nexus of historic sites where teachers can explore these struggles, from the legacy of slavery, the promise of emancipation, the betrayal of Reconstruction, the terror of redemption and race riot, the erection of the color line and resistance to segregation, the civil rights movement, legal desegregation, and integration to a multicultural and pluralistic society. Teachers from middle and high school can bring home lessons for many subjects for their students, colleagues, and districts.

Two one-week workshops focused on the founding, city plan, architecture, and preservation of the city of Savannah, Georgia.

Two one-week workshops for 80 school teachers on southern segregation and the Civil Rights Movement in Atlanta.

The "Problem of the Color Line" Institute will use Atlanta landmarks to trace the rise and fall of the color line. Sites in Atlanta, the capital of the Civil Rights Movement, are uniquely concentrated to help teachers tell the story of the development of segregation, the establishment of viable black community institutions, and the struggle to end discrimination. In advance of site visits, teachers will hear lectures, examine historical documents, and read primary and secondary sources so that they will be able to explore the Civil Rights past at the landmarks sites. Among the sites to be studied and visited are: the Atlanta University Center colleges--home to W.E.B. DuBois, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Birth Home, and Piedmont Park--the site of Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Compromise speech. Teachers will learn how to prepare students to go to landmarks sites to explore the history that transpired there. They will produce lesson plans to use these sites to teach American history.

Two one-week Landmarks workshops for eighty school teachers on southern segregation and the civil rights movement in Atlanta.

"The Problem of the Color Line: Atlanta Landmarks and Civil Rights History" consists of two one-week NEH Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshops held during summer 2012 for eighty school teachers on southern segregation and the Civil Rights movement in Atlanta. The project is anchored in an observation made by W. E. B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk (1903): "The Problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line." In addition to Atlanta University's Stone Hall, where Du Bois penned this famous reflection, the project uses other Atlanta sites as touchstones for examining the history of the "color line," race relations, and the Civil Rights movement in twentieth-century America. Sites include Piedmont Park, the site of Booker T. Washington's 1895 "Atlanta Compromise" speech; the residence of Alonzo Herndon, a former slave who became Atlanta's first black millionaire; the Fox Theatre, which still bears the marks of the segregation era; the State Capitol, which retains monuments to both Jim Crow and the triumph over the color line; and the Auburn Avenue National Landmark District (the site of Ebenezer Baptist Church) and the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site. Georgia State University faculty members Timothy J. Crimmins, Glenn Eskew, Clifford Kuhn, and Akinyele Umoja address such topics as the South before the color line, the debate between W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, the Atlanta Race Riot of 1906, and race relations in Atlanta from the 1930s to the 1990s. In addition, Dana White (Emory University), Beverly Guy Sheftall (Spelman College), and Vickie Crawford (Morehouse College) lecture about patterns of segregation in Atlanta during the Jim Crow era and women in the Civil Rights movement. Readings are drawn from varied primary sources (such as Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk, Ray Baker's Following the Color Line, and autobiographies by Walter White and John Lewis), secondary works (such as William Chafe's Remembering Jim Crow and Aldon Morris's Origins of the Civil Rights Movement), and literary texts (from such writers as Margaret Mitchell, Joel Chandler Harris ["Uncle Remus"], Flannery O'Connor, Alice Walker, and Tom Wolfe).

Two one-week workshops for 50 community college faculty members on African American life in rural and urban communities in the Georgia Lowcountry.

The landmarks workshop for community college faculty has been designed to address the broad themes of race and slavery in American history covered in a U.S. History survey course by focusing on site-specific experiences of communities in and around Savannah from the late eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries. Through course readings, scholarly lectures, landmark site visits, community presentations, guided tours, and research in primary source documents from the Georgia Historical Society collection we will examine the centrality of place in the African-American experience in Georgia?s Lowcountry and the larger Atlantic world. Workshop content is intended to help facilitate classroom discussion of general topics such as American slavery, early-American and nineteenth century economies, religion, art, and music as well as more site-specific subjects such as the impact of geography, environment, time, and place on the development of community values and cultures.

Two one-week Landmarks workshops for fifty community college faculty members on African-American life in rural and urban communities in the Georgia Lowcountry.

The Landmarks workshop for community college faculty has been designed to address the broad themes of race and slavery in American history covered in a U.S. History survey course by focusing on site-specific experiences of communities in and around Savannah from the late eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries. Through course readings, scholarly lectures, landmark site visits, community presentations, guided tours, and research in primary source documents from the Georgia Historical Society collection, participants will examine the centrality of place in the African-American experience in Georgia's Lowcountry and the larger Atlantic world. Workshop content is intended to help facilitate classroom discussion of general topics such as American slavery, early-American and nineteenth century economies, religion, art, and music, as well as more site-specific subjects such as the impact of geography, environment, time, and place on the development of community values and cultures.