Fellowships at the National Humanities Center

FAIN: RA-20228-01

National Humanities Center (Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-0152)
W. Robert Connor (Project Director: September 2000 to November 2012)
Elizabeth C. Mansfield (Project Director: November 2012 to September 2006)

To support the equivalent of twenty-one fellowships in the humanities over a period of three years.

Associated Products

The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African American Writers and Critics, 1934-1960 (Book)
Title: The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African American Writers and Critics, 1934-1960
Author: Lawrence P. Jackson
Abstract: This a narrative history of the essential period of African American literature between the Harlem Renaissance and the civil rights era. These years saw the communal rise of Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ralph Ellison, Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, and many other influential black writers. While these individuals have been duly celebrated, little attention has been paid to the political and artistic milieu in which they produced their greatest works. With this study, the author narrates the history of a crucial era. Looking at the tumultuous decades surrounding World War II, Jackson restores the "indignant" quality to a generation of African American writers shaped by Jim Crow segregation, the Great Depression, the growth of American communism, and an international wave of decolonization. He also reveals how artistic collectives in New York, Chicago, and Washington fostered a sense of destiny and belonging among diverse and disenchanted peoples. Through contemporary documents, he shows that the years that brought us Their Eyes Were Watching God, Native Son, and Invisible Man also saw the rise of African American literary criticism by both black and white critics. By exploring this cadre of key African American writers who triumphed in spite of segregation, this work paints a portrait of American intellectual and artistic life in the mid-twentieth century.
Year: 2011
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/indignant-generation-a-narrative-history-of-african-american-writers-and-critics-1934-1960/oclc/473655638&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat entry
Secondary URL: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9295.html
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's website
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 978069114135
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

Prizes

2012 Book Award
Date: 1/1/2012
Organization: College Language Association
Abstract: "for outstanding literary, linguistic scholarship, noted creative projects, and distinguished service" achievements

2012 Literary Award for Nonfiction
Date: 1/22/2012
Organization: Black Caucus of the American Library Association, Inc.
Abstract: Excellence in adult nonfiction by African American authors published in 2011

2010 William Sanders Scarborough Prize
Date: 1/1/2011
Organization: Modern Language Association
Abstract: awarded annually for an outstanding scholarly study of black American literature or culture published the previous year

2011 PROSE Award for Excellence in Literature
Date: 2/1/2012
Organization: Association of American Publishers
Abstract: The PROSE Awards annually recognize the very best in professional and scholarly publishing by bringing attention to distinguished books, journals, and electronic content in over 40 categories.

Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam (Book)
Title: Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam
Author: Edward E. Curtis
Abstract: The first comprehensive examination of the rituals, ethics, theologies, and religious narratives of the Nation of Islam, showing how the movement combined elements of Afro-Eurasian Islamic traditions with African American traditions to create a new form of Islamic faith. Curtis explains how the practice of Islam in the movement included the disciplining and purifying of the black body, the reorientation of African American historical consciousness toward the Muslim world, an engagement with both mainstream Islamic texts and the prophecies of Elijah Muhammad, and the development of a holistic approach to political, religious, and social liberation. Curtis's analysis pushes beyond essentialist ideas about what it means to be a Muslim and offers a view of the importance of local processes in identity formation and the appropriation of Islamic traditions.
Year: 2006
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/black-muslim-religion-in-the-nation-of-islam-1960-1975/oclc/67392813&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat entry
Secondary URL: http://www.uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=1483
Secondary URL Description: Publisher website
Publisher: Unversity of North Carolina Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780807857717
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

Transmitting Authority: Wang Tong (ca. 584–617) and the Zhongshuo in Medieval China’s Manuscript Culture (Book)
Title: Transmitting Authority: Wang Tong (ca. 584–617) and the Zhongshuo in Medieval China’s Manuscript Culture
Author: Ding Xiang Warner
Abstract: Transmitting Authority investigates the rise and fall of the cultural currency of the Confucian teacher Wang Tong (ca. 584–617), a.k.a. Master Wenzhong, in the five centuries following his death, by examining the textual and social history of the Zhongshuo, which purports to record Wang Tong’s teachings. Incorporating theories and methodologies from textual criticism, the history of the book, and cultural studies, Warner reveals evidence of the Zhongshuo’s textual fluidity during the Tang and early Song dynasties, and argues that this fluidity attended the shifting terms of the Zhongshuo’s cultural value for medieval China’s literati culture. In doing so, Warner offers scholars a model for the study of other works whose textual problems and historical significance have hitherto seemed inscrutable.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/transmitting-authority-wang-tong-ca-584617-and-the-zhongshuo-in-medieval-chinas-manuscript-culture/oclc/881367793&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat entry
Publisher: Brill
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9789004273214
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

A Cinema of Poetry: Aesthetics of the Italian Art Film (Book)
Title: A Cinema of Poetry: Aesthetics of the Italian Art Film
Author: Joseph Luzzi
Abstract: "A Cinema of Poetry" brings Italian film studies into dialogue with fields outside its usual purview by showing how films can contribute to our understanding of aesthetic questions that stretch back to Homer. Joseph Luzzi considers the relationship between film and literature, such as the cinematic adaptation of literary sources, and more generally the fields of rhetoric, media studies, and modern Italian culture. The book balances theoretical inquiry with close readings of films by the masters of Italian cinema: Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, Luchino Visconti, Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bernardo Bertolucci, and others.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/cinema-of-poetry-aesthetics-of-the-italian-art-film/oclc/857743817&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat entry
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9781421411668
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Foundations of Musical Grammar (Book)
Title: Foundations of Musical Grammar
Author: Lawrence Michael Zbikowski
Abstract: In recent years, music theorists have been increasingly eager to incorporate findings from the science of human cognition and linguistics into their methodology. In the culmination of a vast body of research undertaken since his influential and award-winning Conceptualizing Music (OUP 2002), Lawrence M. Zbikowski puts forward Foundations of Musical Grammar, an ambitious and broadly encompassing account on the foundations of musical grammar based on our current understanding of human cognitive capacities. Musical grammar is conceived of as a species of construction grammar, in which grammatical elements are form-function pairs. Zbikowski proposes that the basic function of music is to provide sonic analogs for dynamic processes that are important in human cultural interactions. He focuses on three such processes: those concerned with the emotions, the spontaneous gestures that accompany speech, and the patterned movement of dance. Throughout the book, Zbikowski connects cognitive research with music theory for an interdisciplinary audience, presenting detailed musical analyses and summaries of the basic elements of musical grammar.
Year: 2017
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/foundations-of-musical-grammar/oclc/1020170635
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780190653637
Copy sent to NEH?: No

---