The development of an undergraduate course on friendship.

The development of an undergraduate course on friendship. Olivera Jokic, an assistant professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, develops and teaches a course that examines the nature of friendship from a variety of perspectives. The course begins by looking at how writers from several time periods and cultures have represented friendship and then considers whether friendships are a function of culture. Next, the course turns to the question of whether friendship is a common good or is motivated by self-interest, and examines the ways that gender and gender roles might influence friendship. The final section of the course investigates the relationship between friendship, difference and equality, and distance, including the role that technologies like Facebook play in developing and maintaining friendships. Course readings include Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Plato's Phaedrus and Lysis, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Jane Austen's Persuasion, Zadie Smith's White Teeth, Oscar Wilde's De Profundis; essays by Vine Deloria, John Stuart Mill, and Michel de Montaigne; and poetry by Sappho, Li Bai and Du Fu, William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and Langston Hughes. Readings are supplemented by the viewing and discussion of such films as Some Like it Hot, 4 Months 3 Weeks 2 Days (from Romania), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Thelma and Louise, and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Throughout the course, students keep a journal of their reactions to the readings, produce midterm analytical projects related to course readings and discussions, and create final exhibits about friendships that are displayed on campus.

Two one-week Landmarks workshops for eighty school teachers on the Chicago Black Renaissance of the 1930s to 1950s.

"Renaissance in the Black Metropolis: Chicago, 1930s-1950s" consists of two one-week NEH Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshops held during summer 2012 for eighty school teachers on the Chicago Black Renaissance of the 1930s to 1950s. The workshops explore the cultural, social, economic, and political experience of Chicago's "Black Metropolis" and are led by Chicago Metro History Education Center's Lisa Oppenheim. NEH Summer Scholars learn about Great Depression Chicago and significant figures such as Margaret Burroughs, Charles White, Langston Hughes, John Johnson, Claude Barnett, Vivian Harsh, and St. Clair Drake. Historian Darlene Clark Hine (Northwestern University) leads off the scholarly program by setting out the context for and significance of the Chicago Black Renaissance. In a session at the Chicago Bee's former offices, Adam Green (University of Chicago) discusses the role of black journalism in the community. The South Side Community Art Center provides both site and subject for a lecture by Andrea Barnwell Brownlee (Spelman College Museum of Fine Art), followed by a visit to the DuSable Museum. Co-director Erik Gellman (Roosevelt University) and Lionel Kimble (Chicago State University) address labor and politics, with sites including the former United Packinghouse Workers union office and the Pullman Porters Museum, where participants learn about the predominantly African-American Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. The end of the week features Jacqueline Goldsby (New York University) on literature, including writers Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry, and Gwendolyn Brooks; Davarian Baldwin (Trinity College) on the meaning of Chicago's music; and an extended afternoon of archival work at the Harsh Collection for AfroAmerican History and Culture.

Endowment for publication subventions and an award program in musicology as well as fund-raising costs.

The American Musicological Society seeks an NEH challenge grant of $240,000, which with a 4:1 match will yield $1,200,000. These funds will endow four publication-related initiatives of the Society. The bulk of the funds ($900,000) will create a new subvention supporting the publication of first books by young scholars, whose work often represents the cutting edge of scholarly research, but whose careers are often at their most fragile or challenging point. The remainder will go primarily to existing publication subvention programs, supporting musicological books more generally ($125,000) as well as a monograph series sponsored by the Society ($100,000). These subventions aim to optimize the quality of the best scholarly books on music while keeping their prices affordable. Finally, we propose a new award for books on music in American culture ($50,000), a vital area of musical research that appeals to the broadest literary and musical public.

No project description available

A three-week summer institute for thirty schoolteachers on the urban riots of 1967, placed in a broad historical context.

The Langston Hughes Center proposes a three-week institute in June 2017 for thirty secondary teachers to study race, urban communities, and civil disturbances in historical context. It will feature a broad humanities outlook to place events in 1967 in perspective, utilizing an interdisciplinary faculty with differing viewpoints and diverse racial and gender identities, making connections between prior incidents and today. The institute will encourage teachers to think about the events and issues affecting their students from multiple viewpoints, becoming familiar with primary and secondary texts as well as innovative humanities-based strategies for engaging critical subject matter about race and conflict. Under the guidance of institute scholars, participants will develop web-based portfolios that include lesson plans suitable for their home institutions.

"Soul Call" explores the transnational and cross-genre artistic collaborations of a generation of black artists including choreographer and anthropologist Katherine Dunham, jazz composer and band leader Duke Ellington, and writer Langston Hughes. Drawing on Michael Warner’s Public and Counter Publics, I argue that the generative performances of these artists helped call into being a new public culture of modernity over decades of the circulation of their art through multiple venues and various shifting industries, from clubs through Hollywood films and shorts. Exploring the transnational as well as cross-genre collaborations of these artists offers another way of imagining interdisciplinary work at an earlier stage.

No project description available

Joe Louis's life story illuminates many of the profound social transformations of twentieth-century America, including the Great Migration, industrialization, the Great Depression, World War II, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Black Power movement. My study will become the first comprehensive biography yet written about Joe Louis, a man who not only provided hope to millions of black Americans but who became a hero (perhaps the first black hero) of white America. Yet his story reveals the intractability of race; even as an icon to whites, Louis could not overcome the persistent white belief in black inferiority.

Research and writing of a book on the interaction between Korean and African American authors from 1910 to 1953 on topics of discrimination, colonialism, and freedom.

My project examines the radical interactions between African Americans and Koreans in the twentieth century. Drawing on a diverse range of archives, including U.S. missionary documents, declassified government files, and military records, as well as literary and cultural texts, my scholarly monograph argues for political connections between Black liberation struggles in the United States and anticolonial movements in Korea that resisted Japanese colonization (1910-1945) and U.S. military intervention (1945-1953). Through readings of Black writers and activists, and of Korean writers and intellectuals, my work highlights literary experimentations concerned with U.S. racial discrimination and Asian colonial subjugation to challenge the Japanese and U.S. empires. By bridging African American and Korean studies, I show how people of color invoke narratives of human freedom beyond national borders through shared notions of dispossession.

Writing of a book on how authors in Iran during the Pahlavi dynasty negotiated their place vis-a-vis Iranian literary history, the Persian language, and the allure of global Modernism.

This monograph foregrounds a poetics of non-identity at the intersection of Iranian and global modernism (1922-1979). Beginning with modern Persian poetry in the 1920s, I trace the transformation of “standard” poetic language through its translational dialogues with global modernist poetry and the rediscovery of a seventeenth-century style of poetry from the Persianate Mughal courts of India. At a time when the state advocated a racially motivated fiction of linguistic purity to consolidate an Iranian (Aryan) identity, this deviation from the poetic norms challenged the hegemony of Persian as a national language. It also produced a transnational network between Iranian poets and internationalist poets such as Langston Hughes. Drawing on archival research in Iran and France, I then argue that this critique of identity transformed the language of Iranian cinema primarily through the works of the poet-filmmakers Férydoun Rahnéma and Forugh Farrokhzad in the 1960s.

No project description available

No project description available

Study will be an important contribution to Black American letters. To date there is only one book--James Emanuel's--which focuses on Hughes. It is an extremely condensed analysis of the writer. Hughes authored more than 35 books. To write three articles in a series that will include eventually five: (1) "No Crystal Stair":Archetype Unity, and Symbol in Hughes's Poems on Women," (2) "To Be a Composer,": Hughes and the Triumph of Music and Art," (3) "Done Made Us Leave Our Home": Functions of Hughes's Traditional Image," (4) The Rock and the Bible: Hughes's Christian and Folk Myth," and (5) "As I Grew Older": Hughes and a Romantic Opposition--Innocence and Experience.

Research and writing of a monograph examining how early twentieth century American authors expand representations of trauma.

Almost one-hundred years ago, modernists writing from the margins of a literary movement—or those who wrote about race, gender, sexuality, class, and ability—provided a counternarrative to the dominant psychoanalytic theory of trauma. “Aesthetics of Survival: Counternarratives of Trauma in American Modernist Literature” traces this alternative history to argue that American authors of the 1920s to 1940s—including Richard Bruce Nugent, Langston Hughes, H.D, Lola Ridge, Djuna Barnes, and Zora Neale Hurston—wrote out of the experience of social injustice to expand representations of trauma. Rather than locate trauma in major catastrophe, sudden accidents, and the imminent threat of physical death, as Sigmund Freud did in his work, these writers depict the impact of durational, intersectional, and collective violences to ultimately emphasize resiliency in the face of oppression.

No project description available

My book explores the connections between a selected group of black diasporan and West African Francophone intellectuals whose published and (or) archived writings allow us to study their little-known involvement in major historical forces such as World War I, World War II, the 1955 Bandung Conference, the 1956 Congress of Black Writers in Paris, and the 1966 World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar. Studying these writings, I trace the roots of black diasporan and West African Francophone solidarity against colonialism and racism between 1914 and 1966. Focusing on the African Americans (W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and Mercer Cook), Caribbeans (Marcus Garvey and Aime Cesaire), and Francophone West Africans (the Senegalese Blaise Diagne, Leopold S. Senghor, and Alioune Diop, the Beninese Kojo T. Houenou, and the Ivorian Bernard Dadie), I show how the historical experiences tested the resilience of the black thinkers against oppression and their ties with one another.

To support a variety of programs that will examine the life and work of African-American poet and author Langston Hughes.

To support a 90-minute film treatment on the life, work and legacy of the American author Langston Hughes emphasizing the connections between his life and work and placing him within the context of American and European cultural development of the time.

To support the production of one film on Langston Hughes as part of a 13-part series for PBS on the world and work of American poets.

Implementation of poetry and book discussion programs and a website examining the writings and legacy of Langston Hughes at 20 sites in nine states and the District of Columbia.

Upgraded environmental monitoring equipment for the Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia.  The Rosenbach, which affiliated with the Free Library of Philadelphia in 2013, holds the personal collection of rare book, manuscript, and art dealers Dr. A.S.W. and his brother Philip Rosenbach, who helped to build the holdings at the Folger and Huntington Libraries.  Notable items include the sole surviving copy of Benjamin Franklin’s first Poor Richard’s Almanac; the manuscript of James Joyce’s Ulysses; the papers of modernist poet Marianne Moore; Bram Stoker’s notes for Dracula; rare editions of books by Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, and Lewis Carroll; and art objects including Egyptian sculpture, English furniture, and American portraiture.  The museum hosts many activities for the public, including regular exhibitions, hands-on tours, reading groups, a Bloomsday celebration, and research hours.  The organization has also partnered with local elementary schools, inspiring projects such as studying the Yellow Fever epidemic, learning about poetry through the letters of Langston Hughes, and military base students writing to their own deployed family members after reading Civil War soldiers’ letters to their families.  A 2006 PAG supported the purchase of environmental monitoring equipment, but those data loggers are no longer accurate and cannot be recalibrated.  This equipment would be replaced with new models and a calibrator, based on recommendations from a 2011 risk assessment.

The Rosenbach was founded in the first half of the twentieth century by Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach and his brother Philip, preeminent dealers in rare books. The brothers' personal collection features treasures that they were unable to part with, including the only surviving copy of Benjamin Franklin's first Poor Richard's Almanac and the manuscript of James Joyce's Ulysses. The Rosenbach is home to a collection of nearly 400,000 rare books, manuscripts, and fine and decorative art objects, including some of the best-known literary and historical objects in the world. The Rosenbach requests funds to improve environmental monitoring equipment, including new data loggers to monitor temperature and humidity, and testing equipment. These tools will help maintain appropriate and stable environmental conditions for the objects in the collection. Monitoring environmental conditions has a direct impact on the long-term preservation of the Rosenbach's collections and the ability to exhibit them safely.

A preservation survey of a collection of 200 audiotapes that document the Civil Rights Movement and other activities from the 1950s through the 1980s at Pennsylvania's only historically black university, founded in 1854.

This project will be the first step in preserving and broadening access to Lincoln University's collection of audiotapes of campus events housed in Special Collections of the Langston Hughes Memorial Library. Lincoln University of Pennsylvania was founded by whites in the mid-nineteenth century, before emancipation, to educate free black men. During its first century Lincoln University was the alma mater of poet Langston Hughes, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and African leaders Kwame Nkrumah and Nnamdi Azikiwe, among others. It shifted to coeducational in the mid-twentieth century, in the wake of national desegregation. The audiotapes complement materials in the Lincoln University archives such as print publications and manuscripts.

The purchase of preservation supplies to hold materials from the university’s Rare Books Room, including the historical Langston Hughes Collection; and the purchase of environmental monitors and a light meter to help regulate temperature, humidity, and lighting in the library.  The project would focus on preserving the university’s African American special collections: rare books, periodicals, unclassified government reports, serials, pamphlets, recordings, photographs, and paintings. Highlights include materials on Kwame Nkrumah, a 1939 Lincoln University graduate who was the first president of Ghana, and personal papers of other notable alumni such as Thurgood Marshall and Langston Hughes.  The consultant who provided a recent preservation assessment of the collection would return to conduct a workshop on basic preservation issues for university staff.

The Lincoln University (LU) requests funds to purchase preservation supplies and environmental monitoring equipment to begin the process of preserving and organizing the University’s Special Collections and Archives department. LU’s Special Collections and Archives department holds several significant collections of extreme importance for understanding African American history and culture, as well as the relationship between LU, the nation, and the African continent. Within these collections are numerous rare books, unbound periodicals, video and music recordings, and other items dating back to the mid-nineteenth century. These collections have been used for a wide variety of educational activities and exhibitions. A consultant has conducted a preservation site survey to assess the condition of the building, collection and storage area, and recommended preservation policies and procedures. Our request for funds is based on the consultant’s final report submitted March 2014.

To support 12 postdoctoral fellowships in the humanities each year for three years.

30 months of stipend support (3-5 fellowships) per year for three years and a contribution to defray costs associated with the selection of fellows.

The National Humanities Center, an independent center exclusively devoted to advanced humanities research, seeks five nine-month fellowships for the next three-year cycle (grant period Jan. 1, 2019-June 30, 2022). Since 1978, NEH has generously supported five NHC fellowships during each granting cycle, excepting the last cycle when it supported three. Designated “NEH Fellows,” recipients of these awards are chosen through a rigorous vetting process and join a vibrant intellectual community of 35-40 total Fellows. Each works on a major research project throughout the academic year with significant support from our library staff and fellowship office. End-of-year evaluations from the roughly 1,400 Fellows who have been in residence generally describe their year at the NHC as the most inspiring and productive of their careers. The NHC focuses attention to diversity in all of its dimensions so that Fellows represent a broad range of disciplines, institutions, backgrounds and perspectives.