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 interdisciplinary project that would contribute to the development of a new program in health humanities at a newly established medical school.

Narrative in Tandem is organized around examining narrative in the humanities and medicine through three approaches of conveying, expressing, and understanding "the symptom." "The symptom" is defined to include both medical and social conditions impacting health experiences from patient/provider to connections with individuals and communities not physically present in the encounter. Over the course of two years, participants from disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, and medicine will explore these issues through intersecting activities designed to: 1) contribute to knowledge of narrative in health and medicine; 2) develop narrative skills, including course syllabi and activities that can be applied in humanities and medical education; 3) compile seminar discussions to contribute to a larger strategy about integrating humanities and medicine; and 4) lay the groundwork for establishing a vibrant health humanities program at UCR.

A three-year cooperative agreement that would extend and expand NEH’s partnership with National History Day, in response to NEH’s A More Perfect Union initiative.

With the National Endowment for the Humanities, NHD proposes a three-year cooperative agreement for educational programming that will inspire student learning by engaging students and their teachers with historical scholarship in the pursuit of civic engagement and responsibility. Programs and activities will focus on the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution and the founding of a new nation based on a constitutional democracy. As well, NHD programs and content will examine the ways in which our founding ideals have been applied, struggled over, and met from our founding to yesterday’s headlines. The agreement center on NEH’s new agency-wide initiative, “A More Perfect Union: NEH Special Initiative Advancing Civic Education and Commemorating the Nation’s 250th Anniversary.”

The development and teaching of a new course for first- and second-year college students on the topic of happiness.

“What is happiness?” The question of happiness is not a modern one, but a perennial one. It is not a Western question, but a universal one. This course will use sustained primary source readings from ancient and modern philosophy; religious texts from Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, and Confucian traditions; research from positive psychology; and sociological studies on happiness to explore this question. Being an enduring question, we do not hope to arrive at an answer to the question. But we will demand thoughtful engagement through extensive reading and “scaffold” writing assignments that ask the student to re-think the central question at different points of intellectual development throughout the semester. This new course will explore this question with an intellectually pluralistic account, demanding that students engage with the humanities while being able to apply what they learn to their own lives. We are sure this course will reinvigorate students’ interest in the humanities.

The development of a course for undergraduates exploring the meaning and attainability of human happiness.

This course will examine the question "What is happiness?," using a variety of ancient and modern literary and philosophical works as well as films of diverse genres. Although this question is a staple of philosophical ethics courses, the importance of "Questions of Happiness" is that its approach will be both more interdisciplinary and "predisciplinary" than a traditional philosophy course. Its relation to larger issues in the humanities is methodological: rather than using strictly philosophical texts, it will use paired films and texts that will be juxtaposed along the axes of traditional vs. contemporary & philosophical vs. literary/cinematic. It is designed for all students, regardless of major, who seek to broaden their sense of the possibilities of human experience, as well as students who are already specifically studying film, literature, or philosophy.

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 upper level course on the question, What is a happy society?

What is a happy society? We will consider answers to this question from classic philosophical arguments and compare them with empirical studies from modern social science. We will first consider answers to this question from classical philosophical arguments (Aristotle, Jeremy Bentham, and John Stuart Mill). Next, we will study Tocqueville?s seminal work examining the birth and early development of a modern society. Finally, we will discuss the findings of new studies such as ?positive psychology? and ?happiness economics? concerning what makes people happy. Within this classical-to-modern context, we will explore the seeming elements of a happy society (e.g. service to others, a culture of trust, familial networks) and the role they play, either singularly or together, in creating a happy society.

The development of an undergraduate seminar on the question, What is the nature of happiness?

Mark Walker, an assistant professor of philosophy, develops a course on "the nature, value and means to obtain happiness." He argues that "the nature of happiness is not as well understood as we might imagine or hope. Its value may not be what we think it is, and we may be mistaken in how to pursue it." The course utilizes insights from classic Western sources, contemporary social science, and Buddhism. Professor Walker notes that this course might be the first time that many of his students, a number of them first-generation undergraduates, tackle original texts; hence, it includes an introductory section on critical thinking. Then the course moves through a number of topics, first using Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and a recent psychological study, "The Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect: Does Happiness Lead to Success?" by Sonya Lyubormirsky and others, to complicate the question of whether the inhabitants of Huxley's "brave new world" are happier than we are. Next, it looks at the film The Matrix to see if the altered mental state of the character Cypher makes him "really happy." Plato's Myth of the Cave from the Republic and a recent article by Charles L. Griswold elaborate the mental state theory of happiness. The course then moves beyond such mental accounts to Plato's Philebus and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics to consider other bases of happiness in knowledge and virtue; the idea that there might be a difference between happiness and well-being will also be introduced. J. S. Mill's Utilitarianism then offers the view that people have a duty to maximize total happiness. Recent readings from social science and "positive psychology" by Lyubormirsky, Martin Seligman, and others allow the students to consider whether success leads to happiness or happiness to success. Political considerations regarding happiness are addressed through John Locke's Two Treatises of Government, and the Declaration of Independence. Readings from contemporary social science by Ed Diener, John Helliwell, and Haifing Huang explore whether public policy can be used to promote happiness. Finally, the class considers Buddhist perspectives articulated by the Dalai Lama about the root causes of happiness and unhappiness. In addition to standard classroom activities, the students are given opportunities to present papers to the undergraduate philosophy club and to set up a "philosophy booth" during one of the class periods to engage other students in the question. Professor Walker states that since most of his teaching is on contemporary sources, he wishes to use the course development time to improve his skills with historical texts and to increase his understanding of Buddhism.

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.

A one-year project that would expand a first-semester common read program to reach students in two pre-college programs.

Queensborough Community College of the City University of New York (QCC) seeks funding to expand the Welcome Read program, an interdepartmental community-building initiative that brings together first-semester students in pre-college programs and college writing courses in shared conversations, creative pursuits, and campus engagement related to two common texts, a chosen poem and the graphic memoir, March: Book Three.

A series of activities that explore the principles of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" including a grant program, a radio and public television series, and a student poster/essay contest.

Codifying the values that would guide our nation in the “Declaration of Independence, ” Thomas Jefferson named “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” among the fundamental rights guaranteed to Americans. Taking inspiration from these words, RICH will engage Rhode Islanders across the state in an investigation into our nation’s founding principles of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” beginning in September 2004. RICH seeks $44,330 in “We the People” funds to support: a regrants initiative, a public forums radio series, a film series, and a public television series.

To expand the Council's regrant program for projects that explore a wide variety of topics in American history and culture, with particular emphasis on projects which stimulate discussion between diverse groups, projects in rural areas, projects which address underserved audiences, and projects which use innovative program formats.

To continue its advancement of the We the People initiative, the Oklahoma Humanities Council (OHC) will place a statewide call for proposals that focus on themes and events in American history.

Two one-week workshops for eighty school teachers using the Adirondacks to understand the interconnections of urban and wilderness environments in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America.

Two one-week workshops for eighty school teachers using the Adirondacks to understand the interconnections of urban and wilderness environments in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America. Directed by historians Kevin Sheets and Randi Storch (State University of New York College of Cortland [SUNY Cortland]), this workshop explores "the social, cultural, political, and economic relevance of the Adirondack wilderness" to the history of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, which has often been taught with an urban focus. Participants learn on-site at three Adirondack Great Camps (Camp Huntington, which now belongs to SUNY Cortland, and those of the Vanderbilts and J.P. Morgan) and two museums (Adirondack Museum, 1890 House Museum), as well as on contrasting walking tours in urban Cortland and on Adirondack camp trails. Monday's focus on "Innovation, Industrialization and Domestic Life of the Gilded Age" takes Cortland as a case study for understanding life in a nineteenth-century manufacturing town. Participants work with collections at the 1890s House Museum, modeling historians' process of inquiry and interpretation. Discussing Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, which fictionalizes the 1906 murder of Cortland factory worker Grace Brown, they explore the interpretation of historical events through literature. The focus on Tuesday is the cultural and aesthetic ideal of the wilderness, and how Americans of the era defined "wilderness" and "nature" in contrast with the urban experience. Primary source texts and period photographs in the archive and library at Camp Huntington help illuminate the role of "wilderness" in Gilded Age ideas of masculinity, class, and nation building. Wednesday's theme, "From Enchanted Forest to Lumber Mill," focuses on the economic interdependence of city and wilderness. Adirondack Museum curators guide participants through exhibits on the region's industries and help them engage with the museum's collections and historic structures, ranging from a nineteenth-century one-room log cabin hotel to a luxurious early-twentieth-century Pullman railcar. Thursday's topic turns to "Domesticating the Wild," with study of the Great Camps that industrialists built as "civilized" retreats in the wilderness for their lesiure pursuits. On Friday, "wilderness" is considered as a focus of political conflict, most notably in the 1894 debate over protecting the Adirondack forest preserve as "forever wild" in the revised state constitution. Historian Rebecca Edwards (Vassar College) situates these contentions among industrialists, reformers, and naturalists in their progressive-era political context. Workshop readings include writings by Theodore Roosevelt on "the strenuous life" and selections from Philip Terrie's Forever Wild: A Cultural History of Wilderness in the Adirondacks, William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis, Edwards's New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age, Robert Cherny's American Politics in the Gilded Age, and Philip DeLoria's Playing Indian.

Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers using the Adirondacks to understand the meaning and influence of wilderness environments in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America.

This workshop, directed by historians Kevin Sheets and Randi Storch (State University of New York College of Cortland [SUNY Cortland]), explores the social, cultural, political, and economic relevance of the Adirondack wilderness to the history of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, which is taught with an urban focus. Participants learn on-site at three Adirondack Great Camps (Camp Huntington, which now belongs to SUNY Cortland, and those of the Vanderbilts and J.P. Morgan) and two museums (Adirondack Museum and 1890 House Museum), as well as on contrasting walking tours in urban Cortland and on Adirondack camp trails. Monday's focus on "Innovation, Industrialization and Domestic Life of the Gilded Age" takes Cortland as a case study for understanding life in a nineteenth-century manufacturing town. Participants work with collections at the 1890 House Museum, modeling historians' process of inquiry and interpretation. Discussing novels (by Theodore Dreiser and, more recently, by Jennifer Donnelly) that fictionalize the 1906 murder of Cortland factory worker Grace Brown, they explore the interpretation of historical events through literature. The focus on Tuesday is the cultural and aesthetic ideal of the wilderness and how Americans of the era defined "wilderness" and "nature" in contrast with the urban experience. Primary source texts and period photographs in the archive and library at Camp Huntington help illuminate the role of "wilderness" in Gilded Age ideas of masculinity, class, and nation building. Wednesday's theme, "From Enchanted Forest to Lumber Mill," focuses on the economic interdependence of city and wilderness. Adirondack Museum curators guide participants through exhibits on the region's industries and help them engage with the museum's collections and historic structures, ranging from a nineteenth-century one-room log cabin hotel to a luxurious early-twentieth-century Pullman railcar. Thursday's topic turns to "Domesticating the Wild," with study of the Great Camps that industrialists built as "civilized" retreats in the wilderness for their leisure pursuits. On Friday, "wilderness" is considered as a focus of political conflict, most notably in the 1894 debate over protecting the Adirondack forest preserve as "forever wild" in the revised state constitution. Historian Rebecca Edwards (Vassar College) situates these contentions among industrialists, reformers, and naturalists in their Progressive-Era political context. Workshop readings include excerpts from primary sources of the era, as well as such secondary works as William Cronon's essay "The Trouble with Wilderness," and selections from book-length studies by Philip Terrie, Forever Wild: A Cultural History of Wilderness in the Adirondacks, and Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917.

Implementation of a multifaceted program on the history of abolitionism in Brooklyn: including three exhibitions, permanent historic markers, walking tours, a website, and public programs.

In Pursuit of Freedom is a multifaceted public program tracing the history of abolitionism and the Underground Railroad in Brooklyn providing new resources for understanding this dramatic and profoundly significant chapter in American history. Comprising exhibitions, a permanently marked walking tour system, and a content-rich interactive web site, this landmark project will engage metropolitan and national audiences, transforming public memory of this critical chapter of the history of American freedom. The project will bring together the resources of three complimentary organizations the Brooklyn Historical Society, the Weeksville Heritage Center, and the Irondale Ensemble Project.

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.

Endowment for faculty salary and co-curricular programming for a first-year undergraduate seminar program.

Loyola University Maryland requests funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities to build an endowment to support humanities instruction in and humanities-based co-curricular events for Messina, its new first-year seminar program. Loyola's first-year students will participate in two linked seminar courses, one each semester, that will offer them the opportunity not only to engage deeply in disciplinary learning, but also to come to see academic and intellectual pursuits as increasingly relevant and integral to their daily lives. Increasing the size and breadth of the humanities faculty, more than quadrupling the number of first-year seminars in the humanities, and enhancing humanities programming on campus, Messina will breathe new life into humanities education, promote inter-disciplinary conversations, and enhance the intellectual culture at Loyola in and out of the classroom.

This project will publish the book Transforming Women’s Education: Liberal Arts and Music in Female Seminaries, written by NEH Fellow Jewel A. Smith (NEH grant number FA-53416-07), in an electronic open access format under a Creative Commons license, making it available for free download and distribution. The author will be paid a royalty of $500 upon release of the open access book.

Loving Justice: Legal Emotions in Blackstone's England by Kathryn D. Temple focuses on William Blackstone's influential work, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769), which transformed English legal culture and became an international monument to English legal values. Blackstone believed that readers should feel, as much as reason, their way to justice, and as a poet as well as a jurist, was ideally suited to condense English law into a form that evoked emotions. In Loving Justice, Kathryn D. Temple reimagines the aesthetic and emotional world of 18th century English law and provides the first sustained close reading of Commentaries as a work of high art and sensibility. Employing a unique blend of legal, literary, and political history and theory, the author argues that Commentaries offers a complex map of our relationship to juridical culture and continues to inform our understanding of the concepts of justice and injustice today.

To support a SCHOOLS FOR A NEW MILLENNIUM planning project on the creation of a curriculum reflecting cultural diversity, for a public high school in Hyattsville, Maryland.

To support 10 NHI scholars to conduct workshops on research and pedagogy to develop innovative approaches to American Studies courses.

To set up a consultancy program to help American studies scholars build effective programs, free from racial, sexist, and ethnic barriers, which will deepen and broaden the contribution of humanistic pursuits and values to higher education. Consultants will come from the 1975-76 NHI at Yale.

To support a faculty study project that will focus on seminal humanities texts,with a view to designing new text-based courses for freshmen in the Gallatin Division.

A four-week institute for twenty-five college and university faculty to examine Flannery O'Connor's work through various critical and disciplinary perspectives.

Georgia College presents “Reconsidering Flannery O’Connor,” a four-week institute for twenty-five college and university teachers, in July 2014. Against the quaint, historic backdrop of O’Connor’s alma mater in Milledgeville, Summer Scholars will dive into the culture and environment that inspired O’Connor, examining thorny and teachable issues of religion, race, violence and human consciousness, and cultural conflicts in her work. Distinguished scholars will lead students through a variety of seminars, lectures, and hands-on work in GC’s O’Connor Collection. The institute will stimulate Scholars toward their career goals, in part by supplying them with key primary and secondary texts for vibrant teaching and up-to-date scholarship; support them as they begin or improve their teaching of O’Connor; and inspire them to produce internet postings, conference papers, articles, and books about O’Connor and her contemporary relevance. Project period will be Oct. 1, 2013-Dec. 31, 2014.

To offer an interdisciplinary core program in the humanities, for freshmen and sophomores. The freshman program will be historically developed, emphasizing civilizations significant to Western culture; the sophomore program will be thematically developed, emphasizing the central ideas of freedom and of life and happiness.

Level II, two-week, fully residential Summer Institute for 25 high school humanities teachers, hosted at Baylor University in Waco, TX, from July 17-28, 2023