Production of twenty-four podcast segments and four video short films on the culture of the American South.

“The Prologue” is a series of feature-length segments deeply reported and researched to air within Points South, an hourlong podcast from the Oxford American. Points South reflects the richness and diversity of the Oxford American magazine and its affiliated programming. Over the organization’s twenty-five-plus years, the South’s most important and promising writers, scholars, poets, and artists have told their stories in the magazine’s pages and at its events. In twenty-four segments over three years, “The Prologue” seeks to unearth Southern stories and experiences at their roots, tracing the importance of places, moments, and people to their reverberations in the present.

Production of a feature-length documentary about the photographer Roman Vishniac (1897–1990).

Vishniac will explore Roman Vishniac’s career and photographs and detail his dramatic life story. Made with the full cooperation of Vishniac’s daughter, Mara Vishniac Kohn, and with access to the Vishniac archive of more than 10,000 images, the documentary will delve into the complex person and story behind the photos. It will address controversies surrounding Vishniac, including recent debates about the authenticity of some of his photographs. It will reveal the ruptures in the family because of his flamboyant, often difficult personality. Finally, the film will frame Vishniac’s legacy as a key modernist photographer and preserver of memory. Vishniac’s collection is vast, unexpected, and causes us to step back in time. Through his iconic images, the film will expose new audiences to a lost world that is quickly fading from our grasp.

A documentary film about the singer Marian Anderson (1897–1993).

WNET is requesting production support for a 90-minute film exploring the life and legacy of singer Marian Anderson (1897-1993). "Marian Anderson: The Whole World in Her Hands" will air nation-wide on WNET’s AMERICAN MASTERS on PBS and will artfully tell the story of this pioneering artist and civil rights figure, presented against the background of the cultural and racial upheavals she experienced at home and abroad. In order to broaden public understanding of Anderson beyond the iconic moment of her 1939 “Freedom Concert” on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., this film will also illuminate her exceptional artistic talents, and explore the thoughts and ideas of this deeply private person. Utilizing an extensive body of archival material and new interviews, this film will paint a full, nuanced, and complex picture of a great artist whose contribution to American history and culture deserves a richer examination.

Production of six thirty-minute episodes on the social history of plastic products.

Parsons Healthy Materials Lab (HML) requests a grant in support of Trace Material, a serial podcast that explores the intersection of our lives and the lives of the materials that surround us. The podcast evolved from materials research in the Lab that identified a gap in understanding of the common materials that surround us, the history of their development and their intersection with our lives. The materials we surround ourselves with have a major impact on our health, but they also tell us complex human stories about the world we live in.

Production of a ninety-minute documentary exploring the life and creative legacy of performing artist Loïe Fuller (1862–1928).

Loïe Fuller: Obsessed with Light will be the first feature-length documentary film about Loïe Fuller (1862-1928), an American from the Midwest who became one of the most famous performers in the world at the turn of the twentieth century. Beginning her career in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, Fuller moved to Paris during the fin de siècle and became known as a visionary artist, inventor, filmmaker and the first American modern dancer. Her innovations were pivotal in shaping the visual culture of the early twentieth century and although her name is largely unknown to the general public, she continues to have an influence in the contemporary art and design world today.

Production of eight episodes of a podcast series on Colorado and Western history.

Each episode of Lost Highways begins by inviting listeners to draw connections between western history and current events. Hosts and lifelong Colorado residents Noel Black and Tyler Hill’s engagement with historical topics opens a personal door and invites listeners to cultivate a sense of wonder at the stories they discover along the way. Episodes span diverse cultures, geographies, and time periods in the history of Colorado and the Rocky Mountain West. Taken as a whole, season three will leave the listener with a deeper understanding of how justice has operated, and where it has fallen short of its promise, in the historical West and more broadly in the United States.

Production of twelve documentaries for radio and podcast on twentieth-century American history and culture.

Radio Diaries’ The Audio History Project is a public radio and podcast series that explores American history in ways that illuminate the present. We approach history as investigative journalists, producing stories that encourage listeners to explore, question, and learn about America’s complex past.

Production of a podcast series on the meaning and origins of modernity, as well as supplementary components including a website, colloquia, and animated videos. 

The Genealogies of Modernity Podcast aims to show how certain understandings of what modernity is and how it came about have serious implications for the world we inhabit. The podcast will bring to life academic debates over the meaning and origins of modernity in vivid stories from ancient, medieval, early modern, and recent history. Each episode focuses on a set of “modernity moments”--passages in history thought to inaugurate a new age. In telling the stories of these modernity moments through the perspectives of multiple humanities disciplines, each episode explores how the humanities shape common and lesser known conceptions of what it means to be modern. This podcast draws on five humanities disciplines in order to recognize, evaluate, and learn from the narratives of modernity that explicitly or implicitly shape the ways we understand the present: history; literary and media studies; art history; philosophy; theology and religious studies.

Production of a ninety-minute documentary film on the life and career of Luis Muñoz Marín, the first elected governor of Puerto Rico.

Everything Seemed Possible: Luis Muñoz Marín and The Making of a Modern Puerto Rico will be a ninety-minute documentary in English and Spanish about an era of radical transformation in Puerto Rico, led by the first elected Puerto Rican Governor Luis Muñoz Marín (1898-1980). The charismatic Muñoz Marín, dubbed “the father of modern Puerto Rico” set aside the debates over political status that had paralyzed the island, in favor of U.S. led economic transformation. He simultaneously embraced an ambitious project of cultural nationalism and formed an internationally award-winning film and education division, seeking “a new spiritual identity”, a way to create foundational myths for the Puerto Rican people. This production grant will enable us to travel to Puerto Rico, to film contemporary scenes and interviews, to complete archival footage acquisition, production and post-production, and create a substantive website, a carefully planned release of our film and an extensive outreach effort.

Production of a ninety-minute documentary film about the pianist, entertainer, and activist Hazel Scott (1920–81).

A ninety minute feature length documentary exploring the extraordinary life of pianist, entertainer, activist and African American film and media pioneer, Hazel Scott. The documentary will be aired on PBS's "AMERICAN MASTERS".

Production of a film about the First Amendment and the balance between free speech principles and other core values.

SPEAKING FREELY explores how our laws, attitudes, and culture norms around free speech have changed in the last fifty years. The centerpiece of our work is a feature-length documentary that explores these themes while tracing the professional journey of renowned attorney Floyd Abrams, who has been at the center of First Amendment case law for decades, beginning in the early 1970s when he represented The New York Times against the government in the Pentagon Papers Supreme Court case. As we tell his story, we explore how twenty-first century life is challenging the First Amendment in new ways, as we strive to balance free speech principles against our other core values, including privacy, equality, security, and personal freedom. The SPEAKING FREELY project also includes a dedicated website, social media, educational curricula, and the potential for additional ancillary media to further a dialogue on these important issues.

Production of ten podcast episodes on Margaret Mead’s contributions to the public understanding of anthropology.

The Wenner-Gren Foundation requests an NEH production grant over 15 months in support of the podcast project, "Uncovering Margaret Mead." The podcast will tell the story of the famed anthropologist Margaret Mead’s epic life and controversial research as a means to inspire reflection on three key humanities themes: nature versus nurture, human sexuality, and whether the cultural worlds of others can ever truly be known. A focused marketing campaign and dynamic companion website will foster public engagement, while a new university curriculum will bring these conversations to classrooms across the United States. Over the course of one season, our team will produce 10 thoughtful, balanced, and analytical episodes through SAPIENS (sapiens.org), the award-winning and free digital magazine that provides a platform for anthropologists to communicate their research to a broad general audience.

Production of a sixty-minute documentary film following a team of computer scientists as they image 2,000-year-old papyrus scrolls from Herculaneum.

A feature-length documentary film following computer scientist Dr. Brent Seales and his Digital Restoration Initiative team of the University of Kentucky as they image the more than 2,000 year old papyrus scrolls found at the ancient city of Herculaneum, destroyed along with Pompei by Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D.

Post-production of a film exploring the legacy of the Memphis Country Blues Festival and development of a website offering additional resources and curriculum materials.

To support post-production and outreach for "The Blues Society," a documentary film exploring the history and impact of the Memphis Country Blues Festivals of the late 1960s.

Production of a ninety-minute documentary exploring the life and work of performance artist, filmmaker, composer, and choreographer Meredith Monk (b. 1942).

A 90-minute documentary feature film on the life and career of Meredith Monk, acclaimed Jewish-American singer, composer, director, and choreographer.

A documentary series on Mexican and Mexican American food culture in the borderland cities of El Paso, Los Angeles, and Tucson.

A 4-part documentary series that explores how individual, regional, national and transnational identities are shaped, contested and negotiated through food practices and culture by recording and filming the unique food cultures of Mexican and Mexican-American grandmothers living—and cooking—in distinct Borderland cities rich in Mexican and Mexican-American culture and cuisine: Los Angeles, El Paso and Tucson. The featured abuelas include a range of different voices--recent migrants, second and third-generation Mexican Americans, Afro Mexicans, and Indigenous Mexican women, all varying in age, occupation, and social class.

Production of a two-hour PBS documentary on the 400-year history of Shakespeare’s plays since they were collected in the First Folio in 1623.

The First Folio: The Making of Shakespeare will be a two-hour PBS documentary marking the 400th anniversary of the most important publishing event in English literature: the publication, in 1623, of the First Folio of the plays of William Shakespeare. Created by the team that produced the NEH-funded series Shakespeare Uncovered, with the collaboration of New York’s Public Theater, the film will recount the process of locating, correcting and printing Shakespeare's plays; the Folio’s fascinating history over 400 years; and why these plays – which, without the First Folio, would be unrecognizable or lost – continue to matter to global audiences. The film will air nationally in primetime, and stream online, as part of the WNET series Great Performances.

A film examining the relationship between the Diné and Dene clans and the role of language and oral tradition in the formation of Indigenous identity.

CLANS is a feature-length documentary exploring the origins of the Diné clans through the oral traditions of the Dene in the Canadian Subarctic and the Diné (Navajo) in the American Southwest. This project centers on traditional Dene and Diné storytellers of the largest Indigenous linguistic families in North America, the Athabascan language family, who weave into our identity language and relationships to land with sacred stories and cultural teachings.

Production of sixteen episodes of the radio and podcast series “Philosophy Talk,” about women in philosophy from antiquity to the twentieth century.

The nationally syndicated radio program and podcast Philosophy Talk will produce a sixteen-episode series that celebrates the unsung heroines of philosophy. “Wise Women: A Philosophy Talk Series on Female Philosophers Through the Ages” will be divided into two seasons; the first season focuses on historical figures from antiquity to the 19th century, the second on contemporary figures who lived during the twentieth century. The series will be broadcast as part of our regular weekly radio program and will be available online as a podcast. Each episode focuses on a different philosopher and features a different guest scholar in conversation with the program’s hosts. While our listeners will have heard of some of the philosophers we will focus on, many names will be unfamiliar; but this is part of the story we want to tell with this series. It will be an opportunity to bring public attention to these women’s often overlooked and underrated contributions to philosophy and beyond.

A documentary about the political philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906–75).

“Hannah Arendt: Thinking Is Dangerous” (wt.) is a proposed two-hour feature film documentary about one of the greatest political thinkers of the 20th century. Supported by the PBS series American Masters, Arendt’s work on the crisis of democracy, the rise of totalitarianism and the banality of evil has never been more relevant than it is today. It is through Arendt’s life and work that the film’s narrative will be constructed.

Production of eight episodes of the “Lost Highways” podcast on Colorado and Western history.

History Colorado respectfully requests $309,887 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support the production of Season 5 of Lost Highways: Dispatches from the Shadows of the Rocky Mountains, a podcast about the overlooked history of the Rocky Mountain West. The season will consist of eight engaging episodes grounded in historical research and personal narratives. Lost Highways tells relevant, diverse, and under-told stories about Colorado and the West and their impact on the nation. Drawing upon the vast History Colorado Collection—particularly oral histories and other audio resources—and augmenting our holdings with new interviews and recordings, our hosts share stories via tightly constructed, professional narratives.

Production of a ninety-minute film exploring the life and legacy of African American intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963).

W.E.B. Du Bois will weave Du Bois' personal and professional biography with the historical and social context of his times, covering nearly a century – from the Emancipation Proclamation, five years before his birth, to the 1963 March on Washington, the day after he died. His writings, from academic journals to national magazines, from prose to poetry, reached a mass audience -- from workers seeking freedom and fairness -- to U.S. presidents grappling with the changing cultural tides -- to the leaders of developing nations. In the film, his writings take center stage, voiced by Du Bois himself or read by contemporary voices and supported by commentary from historians and other scholars. This American sociologist, socialist, historian and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist completed graduate work at the University of Berlin and Harvard, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate. He became a professor of history, sociology and economics at Atlanta University.

Production of a film examining the displacement and homeland restoration of the Kashia-Pomo, a small tribal nation from the Sonoma County, California, region. 

Coming Round: Kashia-Pomo Struggle for the Homeland is the story of a Native California tribe's remarkable successful effort to recover sacred land and their quest for reunification with descendants of family members brought to Russia at the end of that country's brief colonial venture on the California coast

Production of a seven-episode podcast series and a one-hour public radio special using oral histories from Studs Terkel’s book “Division Street: America” to explore social history from the late 1960s to today. 

"Division Street Revisited" is a seven-episode podcast, plus a 1-hour opening special for airing on public radio, written and narrated by 2012 Pulitzer Prize winner for commentary Mary Schmich. In it, we will revisit Studs Terkel's seminal debut oral history collection, "Division Street: America," by finding and talking with the children and grandchildren of the original participants to explore what their lives tell us about the country today. Each of the seven episodes will stand on its own and focus on a primary theme: race, work, labor rights, indigenous rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, conservation and poverty. These episodes will be full stories that will show how and why each of the original portraits was created, and how those same themes echo and evolve in the present.

Production of twenty documentaries for radio and podcast on twentieth-century American history and culture.

The Audio History Project is a public radio and podcast series that explores American history in ways that illuminate the present. The Radio Diaries team approaches history as investigative journalists, producing stories that encourage listeners to explore, question, and learn about America’s complex past.