The Richards Civil War Era Center: Interpreting the Struggle for Freedom

FAIN: CZ-50145-06

Penn State (University Park, PA 16802-1503)
William A. Blair (Project Director: February 2005 to October 2010)

Endowment for faculty and postdoctoral fellowships, summer institutes for school teachers and emerging scholars, conferences, and programs in a center devoted to the study of the Civil War era.

The Richards Civil War Era Center seeks a $1 million NEH Challenge grant to strengthen the study, teaching, and understanding of the Civil War era and the struggles for freedom and citizenship that defined America. Coupled with the Richards Center's current resources, the endowment of $4 million realized from the NEH Challenge Grant will create new humanities programming, building on current efforts to illuminate the history of freedom and citizenship from the establishment of the Constitution through the Civil Rights Movement. An NEH We the People grant will enable the Richards Center to enhance links between the university and the public by stimulating faculty research, training public school teachers, developing curriculum, sponsoring public symposia, and encouraging collaboration between Civil War era historians, public historians, educators, and members of the public. Specifically, the proposal requests support for the following initiatives: a faculty fellowship, a postdoctoral fellowship, workshops with visiting scholars, biennial summer institutes for public school teachers and emerging scholars, undergraduate internships at historic sites, library and web-based instructional materials, and inter-institutional collaboration between Penn State University and public history institutions in the mid-Atlantic region.