The Interpretation and Preservation of American Material Culture: Enriching Graduate Education and Promoting Public Engageme

FAIN: CH-50509-08

University of Delaware (Newark, DE 19711-3651)
Debra H. Norris (Project Director: May 2007 to March 2014)

Endowment for graduate student summer research stipends, public engagement institutes, and symposia in the study of American material culture.

The College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Delaware seeks a $500,000 Challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to be matched 4:1. This Challenge grant will be used to establish endowment funding to support 20 graduate student summer stipends at $4500 each in the multi-disciplinary, humanities-based study of American material culture, including photographs, archival documents, decorative and fine arts, clothing, domestic possessions, toys, tools, machines, motion pictures and videotape, ethnographic materials, archaeological remains, and architecture. Through an innovative, two-week Public Engagement in the Humanities Institute, our students will be trained in digital technologies, presentation skills, and public advocacy. In doing so, they will be better public scholars and they will promote an understanding of the importance of our American cultural heritage. NEH funding will also provide sustained resources to support the Material Culture Symposium