Sterling Allen Brown Endowed Chair in English and the Humanities

FAIN: CH-50846-11

Howard University (Washington, DC 20059-0001)
Dana A. Williams (Project Director: May 2010 to October 2022)

Endowment for salary supplements for visiting scholars, a humanities seminar, and a humanities atelier, plus bridge funding for those activities.

Howard University is requesting a Challenge Grant in the amount of $500,000 for the Sterling A. Brown Endowed Chair. This endowment will fund an ongoing series of prestigious visiting scholars/artists to this university. Because the Sterling A. Brown Chair is purposely designed to draw distinguished scholars and writers to Howard for year-long terms, the arrangement-very different from provisions of traditional endowed chairs-will grant flexibility, visibility, and prestige to both our institution and the invited scholars/artists. In attracting not one but a sequence of luminaries in humanities fields to direct what we have outlined in this proposal as the "Howard Humanities Seminar" and the "Howard Humanities Atelier," this project will significantly enhance the intellectual quality, range, and quantity of scholarship inspired and produced in the humanities division at Howard University.