A three-year project to develop a health humanities minor.

Bucknell University’s Health Humanities Working Group proposes the development of a new interdisciplinary minor in the health humanities as a means of revitalizing the liberal arts core, expanding students’ humanistic knowledge of health, and contributing to the University’s already well-situated rural and community partnerships. The minor will have three basic components: 1) a gateway course entitled Humanizing Health; 2) three electives drawn from different humanities departments; and 3) a capstone experience placing students in civic engagement with our rural local communities. Funded activities include summer workshops; curricular development grants; funding for the program director; and external review. Through its emphasis on the urgency of the health humanities for all students--not just those pursuing careers in biomedicine--this project will amplify the humanities’ contribution to understanding health, illness, and medicine within our campus and our regional communities.

A two-year program of study, framed by two conferences, in which ten faculty would conduct research and develop teaching modules on Lincoln University's diasporic heritage.

"Lincoln University of Pennsylvania's Global Heritage and Legacy" consists of a two-year program of study, framed by two conferences, in which ten faculty members conduct research and develop teaching modules on Lincoln University's diasporic heritage. This project seeks to revive the humanities at what has become an increasingly science-dominated institution. It does so by shaping a program that harnesses Lincoln University's distinctive history as the first institution of higher learning for African Americans (1854), ample legacy of prominent graduates, and ongoing connections with Africa and the Caribbean. Lincoln University taught Liberian boys beginning in 1873 and, nearly a century later, students from the Caribbean and emerging African nations. It graduated the first president of independent Nigeria and the first prime minister of Ghana. Lincoln University's distinctive humanities alumni include Langston Hughes of the Harlem Renaissance; the late writer and musician Gil Scott Heron; Larry Neal, founder of the Black Arts Movement; and film historian Donald Bogle. The program opens with a four-day summer institute with topics including "Lincoln University poets and their impact on the world; the University's impact on African history and Africa's impact on the University; the University and the Civil Rights Movement; and Frederick Douglass as a catalyzing figure for humanities studies." Sessions also introduce faculty to the university's online archives and collection of African art. During the following academic year, ten core faculty, selected through competition, conduct research and develop course modules that build on the institute topics and university resources. They present this work at a two-day humanities conference in the fall of 2013. Though the summer institute and fall conference are be open to all faculty and the general public, priority for the core faculty would be given to those who teach first-year students in order to maximize the program's impact.

A two-year faculty and curriculum development project on contemporary Native American culture.

This project will recruit ten faculty from both humanities and non-humanities fields to participate in a two-year long project to infuse Contemporary American Indian Culture across the curriculum. As part of the professional development, faculty will travel to American Indian museums and cultural centers in New Mexico and Oklahoma, as well as visit the Prairie Band Potawatomi Reservation in Mayetta, KS. Out of this professional development, the faculty cohort will develop course modules to integrate the study of Contemporary American Indian Culture into their courses. These courses will form part of the curriculum for JCCC’s Certificate in American Indian Studies, to be launched in Spring 2020.

The continued employment of five museum educators in order to enhance and expand virtual learning opportunities for K-12 students across Pennsylvania.

The Northampton County Historical and Genealogical Society respectfully requests to be considered for funding which will enable us to digitize our existing school tours for grades K - 12 and create dynamic virtual field trips. Our school tour program is popular with area school districts and is an Education Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) Education Improvement Organization (EIO) program. The COVID-19 school closures have caused cancelled school tours. This creates a critical lack of ability to share our mission with students and the lack of income to help support our operating budget. Our staff is ready and eager to immediately begin this critical project.

Salaries for four furloughed employees, stipends for faculty to develop online instructional material, and the purchase of equipment for online instruction.

Misericordia University will foster discourse regarding the pandemic and its impact on local, national, and global societies from the perspective of the humanities by reinstating four furloughed staff and developing new initiatives that further public conversations about the necessity of the humanities regarding health and society. Additionally, the grant will strengthen online teaching within the humanities as we prepare for the unknowns of the upcoming academic year. Funding will also support dialog with the broader community though online lectures by faculty and a podcast hosted by the Medical and Health Humanities program. Finally, the grant will support the development of Continuing Medical Education courses that are informed by humanities’ perspectives and ways of knowing.

The retention of four staff positions for the transition to online instruction.

We are requesting NEH CARES support to implement three main activities: 1) Relieve the COVID-created budget crisis that is a serious impediment to sustaining our humanities emphasis, 2) Convert to a Hybrid flex model that is responsive to new ways of learning and teaching, and 3) Retain four positions that offer critical support to our humanities foundation.

The development of an “Ethical Interdisciplinary” partnership that will expand the role of humanities education for undergraduates.

This planning grant will allow us to apply ethical interdisciplinarity at Allegheny College to enhance the impact of the humanities. We define ethical interdisciplinarity as interdisciplinary partnerships that allow scholars to learn with one another, rather than to learn about each other in isolation. Our planning committee will develop plans for the following: 1) interdisciplinary team-taught courses that intentionally connect the humanities and the sciences, 2) an investigation of the influence of the humanities in existing interdisciplinary programs, 3) the expansion of the humanities in experiential programming, 4) the incorporation of the humanities into Allegheny’s new model of adaptive advising, 5) the establishment of protocol for interdisciplinary and collaborative senior capstone projects, and 6) the development of interdisciplinary research and teaching teams. This work will align current and proposed initiatives to achieve curricular and co-curricular coherence.

The development of a Health Humanities concentration at the University of Scranton.

This application proposes a Humanities Connections Planning Grant to fund the development of a new Health Humanities concentration at The University of Scranton. This concentration will emphasize the integral role of the humanities in shaping and transforming healthcare, health, and well-being. It aims not only at providing a more comprehensive education to the students enrolled in the programs for the health professions, but also seeks to develop new pedagogical practices informed by interdisciplinarity, community-based learning, and diversity and intercultural competence. These three interrelated areas of focus will guide the development of the concentration, with the support of institutional and community partners who have already expressed their interest and needs in relation to such a program, such as the Office for Community-Based Learning, the Leahy Community Health and Family Center, the Humanities Initiative, and the Pre-Medical and Pre-Health Professions Programs.

A one-year planning grant to develop a humanities-centered interdisciplinary program in rural poverty studies.

Juniata College in Huntingdon, PA requests funding for a NEH planning grant for “Humanities Explorations of Rural Poverty and Place: Fostering Narrative Imagination and Civic Curiosity.” With this project, Juniata will complete the planning process for the creation of the Rural Poverty Studies (RPS) program rooted in humanities traditions. The goal is to utilize study in the humanities to help students better understand structural poverty and its impacts on the lives of people in rural settings. The program centers on how the humanities inspire curiosity about the causes and effects of rural poverty to help students imagine ways to make the world a better place. Historically, urban poverty dominates the field, but recently attention is given to how poverty manifests itself in the specificity of rural places. Comparative studies will explore rural poverty in the regions of central Pennsylvania served by the historic East Broad Top Railroad, and the Black Belt region of rural Alabama.

The development of a One Health Communications minor, a set of five interdisciplinary courses focused on how ideas and meanings are produced and delivered, connecting humanities training with scientific thinking.

When and where the STEM fields have failed, it has often been as much a communication as a scientific issue. These fields struggle to translate knowledge both for public consumption and for the purpose of intellectual collaboration. The humanities have long been overlooked as a resource for improving the communication of scientific knowledge. The creation of a One Health Communications minor, the main outcome of this proposal, will elevate the role of the humanities, particularly English and rhetorical studies, within Delaware Valley University’s very popular One Health initiative which offers programming designed to better connect the various pre-vet, pre-health and other STEM programs. In addition to a new minor, the project outcomes will include a professional development workshop focused on integrating lessons from the field of rhetoric into the sciences; and campus-wide presentations that will address topics related to rhetoric and science as part of the One Health speaker series.

Revision of a curriculum for a degree program in medical humanities.

Expansion of the Medical and Health Humanities degree program curriculum to create a multidisciplinary program with embedded experiential learning that challenges students to understand how the Humanities inform and shape concepts of health, and to apply their academic knowledge to practice in a meaningful and lasting manner.

A two-year curriculum development project that would create two interdisciplinary courses integrating rhetoric, political science, and marketing.

Susquehanna University proposes to launch "Promoting Civic Discourse in a Polarized World" as part of the National Endowment for the Humanities’ (NEH) Humanities Connections program. This implementation project brings together Professors Betsy Verhoeven (Humanities: Rhetoric and Composition, a subdivision of English), Nicholas Clark (Political Science), and Emma Fleck (Marketing and Communications) to develop a cohort of two linked and team-taught courses enrolling approximately 100 students. Both courses share a project-based lab experience, which will feature student-led projects from both classes, designed to promote civic and respectful discourse to the broader public. These projects and curriculum materials will be disseminated via a public-facing website. In addition, an estimated 50 faculty members from Susquehanna (as well as other local schools) will participate in faculty development workshops that promote the pedagogical model and content of the project.

Two-day conference whose principal function would be devoted to the discussion of retrieval systems and various techniques that have been established in attempting to coordinate discrete retrieval in various locations and disciplines. The conference would include representatives from the National Science Foundation, Library of Congress, American Council of Learned Societies, and other similarly informed organizations. The conference would also include a session devoted to a discussion of the possible future capabilities of computers and to the impact that this manifestation of various techniques might have upon the philosophy of knowledge.

Funds to support planning for an international symposium scheduled for 1971 dealing with the communication of complex, philosophic and profound ideas through mass media to the public in general. ABSTRACT: Recognizing the difficulty of communicating complex, philosophic and profound ideas through mass media to the public in general, funds to support planning for an international symposium scheduled for 1971 dealing with this problem. Three preliminary meetings in the U.S. and abroad are planned. About 20 persons--half scholars and writers, half in the mass communciations field--will particpate in the symposium. The symposium itself to be a test case of communication; i.e., certain members of the symposium will be asked to prepare papers on such complex problems as how to the control the population explosion without doing violence to our social and philosophic ideas about individual rights and freedom, ect. Each of the 20 participants to write a paper which will be a chapter of a book to be published commercially. Those participants involed in mass communication, through their organizations, will be asked to arrange specifically for the dissemination of ideas presented in the symposium.

The development of an undergraduate course on the meaning of life, focusing on writings from ancient Greece and Rome.

This project aims to develop a course exploring nine different versions of how to live a life worth living by reading several works of ancient literature, history, and philosophy. By studying Homer, Sappho, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Marcus Aurelius, and Augustine, students will learn how to think analytically about the fundamental question of the meaning of life by joining the western tradition's argument about the nature of the meaning of life.

The development of an upper-level undergraduate course on the nature of love in works by Augustine, Shakespeare, Rousseau, Austen, Freud, and Darwin.

This course treats a question that cuts across the humanities disciplines - namely, 'what is love?" It contributes to our investigation of that question by drawing on multiple disciplines and by exploring what humanists can learn from non-humanists, including natural and social scientists, about love. Students will seek to develop a provisional understanding of love by considering these questions, among others: Is love an expansive feeling that one self-sufficient person feels for another, or is it a need that drives an incomplete person to seek someone to make him whole? Is love reasonable, so that we can inquire into whom we should love, or is it fundamentally mysterious and spontaneous, offering itself only to people who know reason's limits? Is loving another human being the ultimate end, or is it part of a bigger pursuit, of communion with God, or of happiness, or of immortality? Readings will include Plato's Symposium, Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Freud's Three Essays.

The development of an undergraduate seminar on the question, Why be just?

This course, designed for undergraduates at a small, public, historically black university, considers the relation of social and political justice to individual choice and virtue by asking the question Why Be Just? Readings include extended selections from Plato's Republic, juxtaposed with works by Sophocles, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Shakespeare, Marx, Mill, Nietzsche and others. In the last weeks of the course students examine the United States Constitution in the context of the 1787 convention, and read a selection of African-American speeches and writings, from Frederick Douglass to Barack Obama, focusing on the relation between "being just" and democratic citizenship. By considering (arguably) the strongest case against democratic virtue in Western philosophy, students are called upon to engage deeply and critically with the core ideas of justice, citizenship and personhood inherent in our American foundation.

The development of a first-semester interdisciplinary seminar on the examined life.

The development of a first-semester interdisciplinary seminar on the examined life. A four-member faculty team develops a course for first-semester students that explores the question, What is the examined life? The course is organized into three historical units, framed by a prologue and epilogue. In each unit, a relevant example of period art supplements the core readings and a biographical case study encourages students to assess an examined life. With a deliberate focus on close reading, analytical writing, and group discussion, the course immerses students in the very practice they are studying. The prologue invites students to compare Ancient Near Eastern cosmology and Michelangelo's "Genesis" in the Sistine Chapel. In Unit 1, on antiquity, readings of Hesiod, Sophocles, Aristotle, and Polykleitos address themes of happiness, fate, and freedom. A study of Greek and Roman portraiture shows idealized versus realistic conceptions of physical beauty, and Socrates' trial and death provides the biographical lens. Unit 2, on the medieval world, uses Augustine's Confessions as the biographical case study. Students read the Rule of St. Benedict and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales to compare monasticism and pilgrimage, and a study of monastic and pilgrimage architecture elucidates the different traditions. Students also compare the emerging liberal arts of al-Ghazali with the scholasticism of Aquinas. In Unit 3, on the modern era, Shakespeare and Rembrandt illustrate a new interiority and Nietzsche and Freud its later iterations. The social emphases of Austen and Marx are contrasted with the reclusiveness of Dickinson and Thoreau. Landscape painting shows nature as a place of solace and terror, and Darwin's letters supply a biographical view. Finally, in the Epilogue, students consider the contemporary world by comparing the ubiquitousness of self-representation ("selfies" and social media) with Foucault's portrayal of individuals in institutional settings. The faculty meet weekly to integrate the perspectives of their four disciplines (philosophy, religious studies, art history, and anthropology) into the final syllabus. They also develop a series of colloquia with guest speakers, films, and faculty debates as a means to bring the intellectual community of the course to the rest of the campus. They envision the course as a model for the new "Connections" curriculum, and work with faculty to develop additional courses in this vein.

The development of an upper-level undergraduate course on the meaning of peace in diverse cultural and historical settings and on the conditions under which peace might be obtained.

The development of an upper-level undergraduate course on the meaning of peace in diverse cultural and historical settings and on the conditions under which peace might be obtained. Bernie Canteñs, a philosophy professor at Moravian College, and Kelly Denton-Borhaug of the religion department develop an upper-level undergraduate course open to all students on the question, What is peace? They engage the subject by studying subsidiary questions: How do we define peace? Why are there so many different visions of peace? Is peace realistic in a world filled with so much violence and war? What are the greatest challenges to achieving peace? Is peace sustainable? What role do social, political and economic conditions play in our understanding of peace? Are we obligated to pursue peace? These questions point to the relationship of peace to ideas about justice, equality, security, morality, violence, nonviolence, compassion, resentment, and revenge. The course is divided into four units: 1) visions of peace, encompassing reason, religion, consent, rights, democracy, and pragmatism; 2) theoretical themes emerging from the first unit, including human nature, inner and outer peace, positive and negative peace, just war, and violence and non-violence; 3) case studies of peace, focusing on the careers of the nonviolent Chicano activist Cesar Chavez and the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh; and 4) consideration of the future of peace, in which students investigate the question as manifested in their own lives. The course asks students to develop analyses and plans to build peace and then present their ideas to the class. Readings are drawn from such classic works and authors as the Bible, the Qu'ran, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Hobbes, Kant, Clausewitz, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thich Nhat Hanh, and contemporary writers and theorists including Hannah Arendt, Michael Walzer, Daniel Berrigan, the Dalai Lama, Joam Evans Pim, Jose Antonio Orosco, Gene Sharp, and Jody Williams. From an extensive core reading list, students are expected to read 75-100 pages per week. The course includes an opening visit to the Brandywine Peace Community and uses electronic media for dissemination. Course development complements and expands the directors' research on forgiveness, political reconciliation, just war theory, and U.S. war culture and sacrifice. The course ties in with the college's general education curriculum, which is currently focused on the central themes of poverty and inequality, sustainability, health care, and war and peace.

A two-year project engaging underserved high school students with public digital humanities projects

A Spotlight on Humanities award will expand iCAMP Academy by offering critical pedagogical experiences, digital skills, and DIY cultural practices through a lens of public digital humanities (DH). We build on iCAMP, a successful program for college-readiness, critical thinking, and digital skills with high school students from School District of Philadelphia. We expand iCAMP with 3-phases to critically engage participants with DH, before, during and after iCAMP: Phase 1, Pre-iCAMP Academy a 5-day workshop led by an external DH expert for faculty and undergraduate near-peer mentors; Phase 2, iCamp Academy, modeling and teaching principles of DiY praxis to 30 high school students; and Phase 3, Reflection and Renewal Workshop a key step in the critical praxis process, in which participants reflect on pre-Workshop and iCamp. The award will result in an expansion of iCamp by focusing on humanistic inquiry centered on student-created public humanities projects centered on Philadelphia.

A one-week training program, two monthly discussion groups, and two concluding public discussion events.

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the Warrior Writers wish to partner on a series of discussion programs titled, The Art of Re-integration: Veterans and the Silences of War . Through facilitated discussion placed into context by both primary and secondary source materials, the project aims to build a healthier veteran community, in which veterans and family members can speak openly and honestly with their peers, as well as situate their unique perspectives in a historical context.

A six-day teacher seminar that will explore the works of art in the NEH's Picturing America image set. Forty Philadelphia-area teachers whose schools have received the image set will have the opportunity to connect these select works of art--representing three centuries of our shared national heritage--to objects in the Museum's renowned American collections, and to cultural and historical institutions across the region.

The applicant requested a Chairman's grant of $24,392 to run a one-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 August 2009, will serve approximately 175 teachers and librarians from the Pittsburgh 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 Carnegie Museum will receive attention for its relevance to the PA portfolio (including a John Singer Sargent canvas included in PA). 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, 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 $24,392 will cover the total budget for running this workshop, including modest teacher stipends and working lunches, speakers' honoraria, and museum staff and facilities

One day professional development in-service workshop for teams of Pittsburgh Public School arts, humanities and social studies teachers to develop strategies for incorporating the Picturing America project in district curriculum. Picturing America posters and materials will be used to foster visual art reception and analysis, encouraging students to express their own ideas and perspectives through the complementary critical and creative process of reading, writing, discussing, and art making.

Speaker presentations on American history, literature programs on the Civil War and American memoir, and grant-funded projects that explore significant events and themes in American culture.

The Pennsylvania Humanities Council will continue to sponsor "Our Stories, Our Future" as part of the We the People initiative. The thematic statewide initiative encourages reflection on themes and stories from American history that have importance for our lives today and are critical to our future as a people. Centered in grants, the initiative will be complemented by speaker presentations on American history, literature programs on the Civil War and American memoir, and promotional activities branding and expanding the initiative throughout the state.

To support the expansion of "Our Stories, Our Future," a statewide project, by awarding grants, supporting speakers and book groups, all focused on stories from America's past that have importance for today and the future in Pennsylvania.

The PHC will continue to broaden the reach of Our Stories, Our Future with the We the People initiative. In 2008, our statewide project will reflect on stories from America's past that have urgent importance for our lives today and are critical to our future. Funds will be concentrated in grants and complemented by speakers and books groups. Promotional and media activities will brand and expand the reach of our face-to-face programs. The project will serve at least 100,000.