A two-year project to develop faculty, curriculum, and other resources for a humanities-centered African American studies program.

Prairie View A&M University, a federally designated Historically Black College and University (HBCU), seeks funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for faculty enrichment and curriculum development to bolster support for the university’s newly launched African American studies program.

A three-year project at Angelo State University in West Texas to preserve and examine the experiences of America’s military veterans and their families from World War I to the present day.

A Century Apart: West Texans and America's Wars is a three year project at Angelo State University (ASU) designed to compile, preserve, share, and analyze the experiences of America's warriors and their families from World War I to the present day. The project directors and their students will examine the similarities, differences, and challenges faced by American soldiers with a connection to West Texas in those conflicts by focusing on six themes: motivation for service, public support for the conflict, familial support and challenges, experience of wartime service, interaction with and articulation of American national identity to foreigners, and challenges of returning to civilian life.

A two-year study and curricular development project on the theory and works of South Texas women artists and writers, for Texas A& M University faculty and Kingsville school teachers.

"Towards an Aesthetics of South Texas Women Artists,” seeks to study and listen to the underrepresented voices of women writers and artist from South Texas. Part of a larger regionalist project that “call[s] into question numerous cultural assumptions about literary history, poetics, thematics, genres, and reading strategies . . .” (Fetterley and Pryse 2), our proposal aims to recover and analyze regional artistic productions as modes of discourse about location (Fetterley and Pryse 11). We propose further to articulate a paradigm by which to discuss and characterize South Texas women’s art and literature in relation to the area, the larger traditions of women’s regionalist writing and art, and national discourses of nationhood.

A three-year bridge program between Texas Lutheran University and an area high school, anchored in the study of Mexican-American culture.

The core focus of the ¡Sí, Más!: Building Bridges with the Center for Mexican American Studies (CMAS) project is to serve the surrounding community; strengthen both Texas Lutheran University (TLU) and Seguin High School (SHS) commitments as Hispanic Serving Institutions; address the changing demographics of TLU, SHS, and the surrounding community; and position more SHS Hispanic students to enroll in and graduate from TLU. This grant, in accordance with the National Endowment for the Humanities Common Good Initiative to foster engagement with Humanities scholarship in areas undergoing demographic change, will allow TLU CMAS and its Mexican American Studies (MAST) program to develop a Mexican American Studies Summer Bridge Program for 20 SHS Hispanic students (2 cohorts of 10 students).

A twenty-month program of scholar-led workshops as well as faculty retreats to revise the Gender and Women’s Studies Program at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley.

The grant seeks funding to bring in program consultants and specialists in an effort to revitalize the Gender And Women's Studies Program at UTRGV. The first phase of the project entails bringing in three program consultants to conduct workshops with affiliated faculty on best practices for generating interest and extending enrollment. In the second phase, external specialists will be invited to lead workshops on women, gender, and sexuality topics. Affiliated faculty will attend both workshops and retreats focused on incorporating insights gained from the external consultants into the program curriculum and course syllabi.

Creation at the University of Texas, El Paso, of an undergraduate bilingual professional writing certificate with a focus on translation theory and ethics.

The Undergraduate Bilingual Professional Writing Certificate Program project addresses the most essential dimensions of English-Spanish bilingual professional writing through a focus on ethics, translation, language, and rhetoric. The proposed project involves substantive curricular development and faculty training on the intrinsic role of ethics in professional writing and translation by focusing on three goals: To prepare English-Spanish bilingual students to write and translate ethically both Spanish and English, in print and online, in professional settings; to deepen faculty preparation in the teaching of ethics in professional writing and translation; to collaborate with community partners through professional writing and ethical translation workshops and student internships. The UBPWC Program is planned in two phases: Phase 1 focuses on offering the redesigned UPBPWC Program face-to-face while Phase 2 focuses on offering the program in full online format.

Collaboration with local school districts to design a social studies curriculum for kindergarten through fifth grade that focuses on the history and culture of the Rio Grande Valley community.

Project SSTARC (Social Studies Through Authentic and Relevant Content) is a 2-year collaborative project between the Center for Bilingual Studies and the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and local school districts in south Texas. The project aims to provide an opportunity for local K-5 teachers to gain better knowledge of local and regional history, create relevant social studies content for their students in both English and Spanish, and disseminate the content on a wide scale to enrich the schooling experience of students by exposing them to authentic humanities content. This project will bring together four humanities scholars of Mexican American Studies to work with a total of 42 K-5 teachers during two different 4-day workshops. At the workshops teachers will collaborate to design lesson plans based on the content presented by the scholars. In Year 2, a one-day conference will showcase the redesigned curriculum to 100 K-5 teachers.

A three-year faculty development project to incorporate geographic information system technology into college and middle school history courses.

San Antonio College proposes "San Anto History GO!": a humanities initiative that uses the ArcGIS Online platform to build location-based learning and augmented reality mobile applications to connect students and the community to marginalized historical places and histories in and around the San Antonio area. Supporting the NEH area of interest, “Protecting Our Cultural Heritage,” "San Anto History GO!" seeks to empower students at both the college and middle school levels to document, share and preserve the history of the spaces they inhabit, and which reflects their lives and their own community’s history.

The enhancement of the human geography curriculum for Lubbock’s public high schools through a collaboration between Texas Tech University and Lubbock school teachers and administrators.

At Estacado High School traditional English and Social Studies instruction has not produced desired outcomes for college readiness. Texas Tech and Lubbock ISD have met this need by building a culture of literacy that has seen significant student growth. To expand these efforts, this project will implement a 4-week history lab that targets critical reading and writing skills in the Social Studies classroom, in which students will engage in academic research and create dynamic projects that reflect authentic historical investigation. This project will positively impact student achievement on traditional assessments, reading and writing competencies, and critical thinking skills. In addition, it will help a highly diverse population of students connect with the regional impact of marginalized and disenfranchised groups in the larger context of U.S. history and culture, connecting their personal narratives to the wider experiences of American society.

A curricular and co-curricular enrichment initiative focused on the cultural and historical roles of Mexican Americans in the Southern Plains region.  

The Center for the Study of the American West (CSAW) at WTAMU undertakes “Forgotten Frontera: The Mexican American Southern Plains” to preserve cultural heritage and to further teaching/learning in the humanities, including Spanish language and culture, through curricular innovation, faculty development, and community outreach. To build strength in humanities through HSI status, the project emphasizes a marginalized ethnic regional history and the under-appreciated importance of that group’s contribution to regional culture. Visiting scholars will address annual topics of “The Llaneros,” “Mexicanidad,” and “Becoming Mexican American.” WTAMU faculty will develop and offer thematically aligned humanities and language courses each year. Working between the university, its museum, and the community, CSAW will oversee curricular development, discussion of HSI best practices, delivery of new research, and student internships.

Faculty and curriculum development for a newly created Native American and Indigenous Studies certificate program, in collaboration with Tribal historians in the region.  

This project will support the expansion of Native American and Indigenous Studies at Texas Tech University. The three-year project will include workshops for faculty to develop courses on Native American and Indigenous themes in direct collaboration with local Native communities, specifically the Comanche Nation, Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma, and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribe. Project funds will support visiting speakers from these communities to visit classrooms at Texas Tech. Project participants will hold a symposium at the end of the process to reflect on this collaboration and ensure continued support for faculty training, community engagement, and curriculum development. The project will coordinate teaching initiatives with the Humanities Center at Texas Tech, and support integration of new courses in the Certificate Program in Native American and Indigenous Studies.

A revision of the Masters in Professional Writing and Technical Communication curriculum to incorporate ethics into required courses for the degree.

A series of workshops on Chicano/Mexican-American studies for faculty at El Paso Community College.

EPCC will develop a Humanities Institute whose purpose will be to build a comprehensive interdisciplinary framework to guide its newly approved Chicana/o Mexican American Studies Program. This project will create an opportunity for humanities faculty members to study together while improving their capacity to teach the humanities in this newly created academic program of study. Renowned humanities scholars from Chicano/Mexican-American Studies programs throughout the U.S. with extensive expertise will lead these workshops. The topics for the lectures/forums will focus on issues directly affecting the U.S.-Mexico border and will lay the foundation for scholarly enhancement and faculty professional development necessary to formally develop a sound program in Chicana/o Studies in El Paso, Texas.

A project to incorporate the theme "Water and Culture" into the University's Core Humanities Curriculum.

The humanities faculty at UIW plan to implement a faculty development program to further internationalize the humanities core (general education) curriculum. The over arching goal is to develop in all students a global perspective through which they will be able to view the world, think about issues, and make decisions. This broad vision is imperative in an increasingly globalized professional workplace. To facilitate the teaching of a global perspective, the humanities faculty has chosen to focus on the international theme of "Water and Culture." This theme will be thread through diverse humanities courses and will also help students learn how to draw connections between seemingly disparate humanities courses in the Core Curriculum. NEH funds will support an array of faculty development activities, including a public speaker series, readings, limited travel and service learning trips, and planning workshops. Curriculum revisions will be made starting in Fall 2009.

A three-year project for twelve middle-school teachers on archival, oral, and archaeological research to develop place-based curricula on the history of the Rio Grande Valley.

"From Porciones to Colonias: Curriculum Innovation in the Rio Grande Valley" is a three-year project at the University of Texas, Pan America (UTPAS) to train twelve middle-school teachers in archival, oral, and archaeological research as they develop place-based curricula on the history of the Rio Grande Valley. Based at University of Texas-Pan American (UTPA), minutes from the U. S.-Mexican border, this program equips seventh- and eighth-grade teachers to incorporate the complex story of the Rio Grande Valley into the region's history curriculum. The story begins with the presence of diverse Indian peoples. It continues with Spanish settlers who received porciones (land grants) in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the subsequent influx of Mexican and Anglo inhabitants, the rise of commercial agriculture, and the development of colonias (unincorporated subdivisions) which comprise Hidalgo county today. In the face of present-day border tensions and severe poverty, this project recovers the historic and cultural wealth of this dynamic borderlands region. It also fosters cross-cultural understanding by exposing teachers, and consequently their students, to their diverse cultural heritage. UTPA faculty affiliated with CHAPS (Community, Historical, Archeology Project with Schools) conduct a series of workshops on the region's land, family, architectural, and archaeological history. Based on these workshops and visits to local sites and archives, the teachers produce oral histories and lesson plans. Culminating the program, they present their work to other area teachers at a free public conference. CHAPS faculty produce an edited volume combining scholarly essays and the teacher projects.

A two-year program of curriculum enhancement using personal narratives, folktales, fiction, and scholarship to develop faculty perspectives on border security

Enhancing the Curriculum in Two Master of Art Programs is a Fellows Program that aims to increase the impact of the humanities in the conversation about border security. While border security has been at the center of public debates and has received the attention of scholarship in the social sciences, there is ample body of work on cultural understanding, language proficiency and the appreciation of different cultures that might deepen the conversation. This project proposes to study the experience of living and crossing the US. Mexico border as portrayed in fiction, personal narratives, folktales and anecdotes to contribute a renewed perspective on security that has been absent from national media and political discourses. Engaging the humanities in topics such as border security will probe the scope and reach of its various disciplines in addressing the contemporary problems of an increasingly interconnected world. The Program will begin January 1, 2014 and end December 31, 2014.

A two-year digital humanities project to record, make accessible, and incorporate into courses the history of Fort Worth’s North Side neighborhood.  

North Side: Discovering the Spirit of Place is an interdisciplinary, digital humanities project that uses geospatial technology to capture and record the oral, architectural, and natural history of the North Side neighborhood in Ft. Worth, TX. In conjunction with North Side community, students, and faculty from Tarrant County College, Trinity River Campus will be engaged in the practice of place-based learning, tightening the bonds connecting the college to its constituents and preserving the legacy of a community for generations to come.

The retention of 22 positions in the core curriculum, language and literature courses, journalism, and a writing lab.

This project protects the positions of affiliate and adjunct faculty in English, Modern Foreign Languages and Journalism who are important for maintaining the class sizes necessary to assure quality and comprehensive writing instruction for University of Dallas Core Curriculum humanities classes during the time of COVID-19.

The Tom Lea Institute seeks funding to adapt, create bilingual curricula and digitize primary source images and art for curricula. Eighty-four percent of students in the borderland are Title I and come from Spanish-speaking homes. The regional history, social studies, art and literacy curricula will be translated into Spanish and adapted for distance learning, thus greatly expanding its usefulness. Using the art and writings of Tom Lea and José Cisneros, students learn regional history and ELR based on their own heritage. The digital library will be expanded by 500 images, including art, writings, and photos for use with curricula.

To develop a four-course interdisciplinary minor in Hispanic Agriculture Studies for students in Texas A& M University’s College of Agriculture & Life Sciences.

We propose to develop an interdisciplinary minor in Hispanic Agriculture Studies that will offer Texas A&M students a deeper recognition of the social and economic role played by Mexican Americans in the state’s agricultural production and food culture. The curriculum will highlight Mexican American contributions to the demographic vitality and economic viability of Texas by integrating humanities (Spanish, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis) and agricultural sciences (soil, crops, animal husbandry, horticulture, nutrition). Aimed at majors in Agriculture but with broad appeal, the minor will develop linguistic and cultural skills through experiential and service learning activities. It will expose students to the state’s multi-layered social history. Four interdisciplinary courses will be developed about the land, food, peoples, and narratives of Hispanic Texas. They will be based on Open Educational Resources and framed within the multiliteracies pedagogy Learning by Design.

Planning for a new interdisciplinary major in Public Heritage.

Faculty at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) seek support from NEH to develop a new, interdisciplinary bachelor degree (a BAIS) in Public Heritage that combines elements of traditional public history, cultural heritage studies, and museum studies programs and moves substantially beyond any of them. The proposed Public Heritage BAIS has two primary foci, Bilingual, Bicultural, Border Heritage and Integrated Cultural and Natural Heritage Landscapes. These foci build on the strengths of current faculty teaching and research activities across multiple disciplines, as well as existing experiential learning and institutional partnerships in the region. An NEH Humanities Connections Planning Grant will support a yearlong process during which the faculty committee will consult with external scholars and local collaborating institutional to finalize the design, structure, content, and expected student learning outcomes for the Public Heritage BAIS.

A one-year planning grant linking humanities and STEM fields through a summer bridge program, experiential learning, and courses in English, biology, and mathematics.

El Paso Community College (EPCC) requests funds to plan HUM-STEM: Redefining Experiential Curriculum for First-Year Students. The curriculum will serve to connect and engage students in the humanities and STEM. This project will build upon existing institutional efforts to incorporate project-based learning into courses, particularly in the STEM areas, but will uniquely infuse humanities-based curriculum and practices, connecting two important academic realms that can nurture and build upon each other. The project will also feature authentic interdisciplinary collaboration and experiential learning opportunities that expose students to the richness, rigor, and vitality of the humanities in three disciplines: English, Biology, and Mathematics. These opportunities will bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical experiences for students and will provide an incubator for faculty to learn and research the impact on students and their learning.

The development of interdisciplinary courses and civic engagement activities focused on the history of the African American community of Quakertown.

Quakertown Stories is an interdisciplinary curricular project with three major goals: 1) To foster civic engagement by creating a series of courses that implement place-based research assignments focused on Quakertown, a displaced freedmen community in Denton, TX; 2) To facilitate dialogue between the university and Denton community about Quakertown and how it has shaped present day Denton through panel discussions and a student-led public Town Hall; 3) To build on previous programs to establish an ongoing working group to support faculty in designing courses that integrate place-based research and other experiential learning opportunities into their classes.

To investigate the effectiveness of the public library as a center for independent study toward achieving a two year college education.

No project description available