Planning and holding a conference on the 50th anniversary of the publication of A Theory of Justice by American philosopher John Rawls (1921–2002). (12 months)

John Rawls was one of the greatest philosophers of the last century. 2021 will bring the 50th anniversary of the publication of his book A Theory of Justice. In September of that year, the University of Notre Dame will host an international conference to mark the anniversary. The University seeks a Convening Grant to support the conference. The interpretation of Rawls's work, the usefulness of his philosophical method and the validity of his conclusions have all been hotly contested in recent years. The Notre Dame conference will bring together approximately thirty of the best political philosophers in the world who engage Rawls's work, some critically and some sympathetically. The conference promises to advance scholarly understanding of his thought and its relevance to contemporary politics. It also promises to advance knowledge of what the NEH calls "America's core principles of government" and thereby to further the purposes of the NEH's initiative "A More Perfect Union".

Planning and holding a conference on the ancient sciences in comparative perspective between the Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, and Roman worlds. (12 months)

The aim of this NEH Collaborative Research Grant is to host a major interdisciplinary conference and workshop on ancient medicine, astronomy, astrology, and divination, in cross-cultural perspective. Particularly, the exchange of scientific knowledge between the ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, and Greek and Roman worlds will be explored, with an emphasis on broadening the scholarly foundation for such inquiries through new research on unpublished primary texts.

Planning and holding a two-day conference and the preparation for publication of an essay collection on the topic of a Global Philosophy of Religion. (12 months)

To this day, philosophy of religion remains preoccupied with the Christo-centric questions and categories of its European origins, which simply do not apply to a significant number of the world’s religious traditions. If philosophy of religion is to be relevant to the globalized, 21st-century world, it must develop new questions and categories that are suitable for unbiased cross-cultural inquiry. This convening grant brings together, in a 2-day conference, 17 scholars who collectively specialize in the religious philosophies of S Asia, E Asia, W Asia, Africa, indigenous N America, and Europe too. Each will prepare and present questions and categories for philosophy of religion informed by her own area of study, then test them against and modify them in view of the other proposals. These proposals, assessments, and modifications will be published as essays in an edited volume along with a comparative conclusion by the project director.

Preparation for print publication of a multi-authored monograph on the history of African medical heritage from 1890 to 1990 and preparation of a special issue of Méthod(e)s, an African bilingual peer-reviewed journal (English-French). (36 months)

Constructing African Medical Heritage explores the historical connections among African colonial conquest, ethnographic research, decolonization, and medical and art history in order to answer three related questions: How did decolonization and the Cold War affect newly independent states' debates about African medical heritage; in what ways did laws passed, studies published, and ethnographic objects collected during the colonial era shape the contours of this later work; and what role did transnational institutions such as the Organization of African Unity, the World Health Organization, and UNESCO play in these efforts? An NEH publication grant will allow our group to produce a ground-breaking analysis of how different types of African "medical heritage" came into being with the rise and fall of European empires across the continent.

Preparation of a co-authored volume providing a comparative study of three groups in South Asia marginalized because of their religion and cultural backgrounds. (36 months)

With a publication grant from the NEH’s Collaborative Research Program we will complete research for writing a book on the Miyahs in India, the Biharis in Bangladesh, and the Dalit Christians in Pakistan. Each of these communities are deemed non- or sub-citizens and the target of harsh state and majoritarian discrimination and violence. In our research we ask: What is it like to live as precarious non-citizens in one’s own country and how do these communities create and maintain a sense of belonging? Each of these communities were left behind as borders shifted in South Asia following Partition in 1947 and the creation of Bangladesh from East Pakistan in 1971. As such, their lives are interconnected, providing a unique South Asian history of precarity, belonging, and enduring humanity, contributing to larger academic discussions on what it means to be human in our divided world today.

Planning and holding a workshop and virtual symposium on Indian, British, and American contributions to the architecture, collections, and gardens of Victoria Memorial Hall, Calcutta. (12 months) 

Our collaborative project focuses on the Indian legacy of the Victoria Memorial Hall (VMH), an imperial museum and memorial to Queen Victoria set amidst 64 acres of gardens in Calcutta (Kolkata). While a handful of scholars have discussed the VMH as an imperial museum, the histories of Indian contributions to its imperial legacy remain largely overlooked. Remarkably, these contributions were entangled with British imperial art, architecture, and gardens, as well as with American collections of European art. As such, the VMH represents the confluence of Indian, British, and American networks of art, architecture, and garden-design. Our project investigates how the VMH’s Indian legacy was shaped by these transnational networks, and how that legacy might be analyzed within the broader context of decolonizing imperial histories. This project involves scholars from the United States, the UK, and India, who will participate, first, in an exploratory workshop at the VMH and, next, in a virtual symposium.

Preparation of a print manuscript and digital archive detailing the American excavations at Petra in Jordan (1973-present). (24 months)

The American Center of Research (ACOR) will bring together more than twenty-five contributors to complete a final report on the Temple of the Winged Lions (TWL), an important Nabataean ritual complex within Petra, Jordan, dated to the 1st to 4th century CE. This manuscript preparation project will present the findings of the American Expedition to Petra (1973-2005), and the work of ACOR through the Temple of the Winged Lions Cultural Resource Management Initiative (from 2009). An editorial and advisory team will support specialists in archaeology, geology, and cultural heritage to conduct research using archives, artifacts, and site visits within Jordan. Collaborative research conducted online and in person will relate to the archaeological themes of ritual, economy and society, empire, and local communities, opening up new comparative research directions. In addition to completion of a final manuscript, scholarly and public facing outputs will raise awareness of the final publication.

Planning and holding a conference on Black performance in early modern Iberia (1500-1800) and preparation of conference papers for publication in a journal special issue. (24 months) 

This project will convene a conference on 29-30 April 2022 focusing on how the Atlantic slave trade and resulting African diaspora shaped Iberia’s “Golden Age” of theater. Diverse modes of Black performance enriched this quintessentially early modern entertainment as it took shape in Portugal and Spain on the Iberian Peninsula. This theater also thrived across the Atlantic as these two maritime empires extended their reach. To explore this topic in depth, we will bring together nineteen scholars from North America, Europe, and Latin America to present papers at the conference, which will be free and open to the public, at New York University’s King Juan Carlos I Center. After going through peer review, papers will be published in the Bulletin of the Comediantes (volume 75, no. 1 & 2, 2023), reaching a worldwide audience through print and online editions.

A three-day conference and two edited volumes on the relationship between philosophy and money. (24 months)

“Philosophy and Money” is a two-year Conference Grant proposal in support of a first-of-its-kind interdisciplinary collaboration to survey the role of money in the history of ideas. Although the history of philosophy is rich in discussions of money, the topic has been largely neglected in contemporary academic philosophy. There are practical and moral implications, but this project foregrounds foundational questions concerning the relation between economic practice and the development of philosophical theories. In the first year a team of scholars across the humanities and social sciences convene in workshops hosted by The Toolbox Dialogue Initiative to share feedback on original research and to address methodological challenges to interdisciplinary collaboration. In a second year, participants reflect on the results of the conference to revise individually composed chapters and to co-author section introductions to Volumes One and Two of The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Money.

Preparation of a collection of essays on the architecture of the African diaspora in the United States. (36 months)

Architecture of the African Diaspora in/of the United States is a collaborative effort by six scholars to write the first book-length study of architecture by people of African descent in, and from, the United States. The project includes histories of buildings, cities, communities, landscapes, and interiors created by architects, planners, builders, artists, residents, public officials, and activists. This includes professional design work, vernacular architecture, urban design and preservation projects, cultural landscapes, and ephemeral buildings. The work draws connections between disparate topics and situates architectural production within its political, social, and cultural contexts. This collaboration challenges conventional historiographic distinctions between architects and builders, interpreting a range of actors who cross and complicate that dichotomy, and likewise shift the lens of architectural history to diasporic narratives that transcend familiar Eurocentric frameworks.

Planning of an international collaboration on the topic of bringing humanities perspectives to the creation of Artificial Intelligence. (12 months)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an emergent set of technologies. Though touted as a fourth industrial revolution, AI is subject to hype and misinformation. Despite increasing talk about making AI “ethical” and “human-centered,” humanists seldom shape these discussions. “Unboxing AI” is a new international collaboration: at Rutgers, Lauren Goodlad, is leading an interdisciplinary working group in “Critical AI.” At Australian National University, Katherine Bode works with faculty in three AI-related institutes. “Unboxing AI” will organize and publicize two exploratory workshops that put humanistic thinking at the core of research questions that move beyond the technical issue of AI’s “Black Box.” Our written plan will lay out steps for a peer-reviewed special issue and may also project 1) a jointly-hosted international conference, 2) jointly-developed and/or team-taught curricula for ANU/RU students, and 3) a white paper for international circulation.

Preparation of a print manuscript detailing the American-Honduran excavations at the ancient Maya site of Copan (1989-2010). (36 months)

The comprehensive volume entitled, The Str. 10L-16 Sequence: The Architectural Development of the Core of the Early Copan Acropolis, details the evolution of a Classic Maya capital that dominated the SE Maya area for 400 years (426-822 CE). This two-part volume presents the Structure 10L-16 architectural sequence in its entirety, with Part A focusing on the earliest levels excavated by the University of Pennsylvania Museum and Part B concentrating on the later levels excavated by the Asociación Copán. The proposed project will support the intensive collaboration needed to produce a cohesive study of the architecture, iconography, and hieroglyphic inscriptions that formed a narrative of royal power and legitimacy throughout Copan’s history. The manuscript, to be delivered in 2024, presents an intensively researched case study of the development, maintenance, and eventual dissolution of an ancient political capital that will inform analyses of archaic states in the Maya area and beyond.

Preparation of a digital database and interpretive website about the modernization of Cairo between 1828 and 1914.

We request funding for a two-year (2022-2024) Scholarly Digital Project in the Collaborative Research grant competition. In this project, the participants study the impact of capitalism and bureaucratic agency from pre-industrial to industrial Muslim-majority urban societies through the example of nineteenth-century Cairo, the capital of the Egyptian province in the Ottoman Empire. A historian, a digital humanities specialist, five students at Duke University, and international collaborators in France and Egypt investigate this research topic through the creation of a born-digital tool (an XML TEI database of Arabic and Ottoman Turkish newspaper articles) and an HTML website about Cairo’s urban transformation. The products will include articles in peer-reviewed journals as well as the born-digital, peer-reviewed, and freely available dataset, short interpretative essays, and visualizations on the website, hosted by GitHub and double-stored at Duke University Library.

Ten planning workshops and a semi-public symposium on the filmic production and international organizational infrastructure of the United States Information Agency (USIA, known internationally as the United States Information Service, USIS) between 1953 and 1999. (12 months)

The “Legacies of USIA Moving Images Through International Lenses” project will bring together (virtually) a team of renowned international scholars and archivists who are committed to developing international studies of the USIA and its corresponding USIS acronym in offices around the world. This team will schedule a series of ten workshops that develop an interrogative process toward the production of granular analyses of hundreds of USIA films, which will lay the groundwork to identify the opportunities, challenges, and inter-disciplinary potentials to realize new humanistic research about the history and impact of USIA moving images (motion pictures and television/video), especially regarding select areas of the world: Latin America, East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the U.S. itself. This grant will entail two years of research, workshops, and granular analysis culminated by a major public conference plus publication in a blind-peer-reviewed online journal.

Planning and holding a conference centering Indigenous people and knowledge-making in the study of North America’s borderlands. (12 months) 

We seek funding to hold a conference on Indigenous borderlands in North America–the first in a series of international conferences on Indigenous borderlands, crossings, histories, and futures in both American and global contexts–and to prepare a volume of essays for publication. The goal is not only to Indigenize our approach to the world’s borderlands, but also to bring these spaces and their crossings to the fore in humanistic approaches to planetary change. We seek nothing less than to center Indigenous histories and interrelationships as a bedrock of world history and to use this foundation to envision new paths into the future. Bringing historians into a strategic conversation with scholars of other disciplines and with Indigenous community representatives, we ask how cross-disciplinary and community-facing dialogue can advance humanistic knowledge, developing new ways to envision borders, crossings, histories, and futures in contexts of social and environmental change.

Research and preparation of a print manuscript and accompanying website about the Cataract House hotel in Niagara Falls, New York, an important stop on the Underground Railroad. (36 months).

In the Manuscript Preparation category, From the Cataract House to Canada highlights the activism of African American hotel workers who operated Niagara’s busiest Underground Railroad station. This project is a synthesis of archaeological and archival research, enhanced by an ambitious public information program. Results of excavations begun in 2017 will be integrated with new research identifying and exploring the experiences of an ever-changing staff of seasonal employees. Applying advances in borderland theory with an emphasis on Black agency, the team will examine how the hotel’s employees collaborated with African-descended people on both sides of the US-Canadian boundary to ensure safe passage for uncounted numbers of freedom seekers. Products will include an accessibly written, richly illustrated volume, complemented by a web-based StoryMap, QR-coded interpretive materials linked to the Cataract’s location, and a social media campaign inviting descendant participation.

Preparation of a special supplement to the Hastings Center Report composed of 18 essays analyzing cultural narratives concerning dementia in the US and Europe to be made available in print and online. (18 months)

The Meanings of Dementia: Interpreting Cultural Narratives of Aging Societies is an 18-month project to produce new critical writing on meanings of dementia in diverse social groups in the United States and other aging societies. Dementia refers to a group of common, age-associated, progressively debilitating, ultimately terminal conditions affecting thought, memory, speech, and behavior. Humanities scholarship has long studied personal narratives; this humanities-social science collaboration will consider how greater attention to cultural narratives – concepts expressed through metaphors, tropes, images, and other representations that circulate through a society to make meaning out of experience – can translate into public humanities work fostering greater inclusion for fellow citizens living with dementia or providing dementia care. We will produce a print and open-access digital volume of 18 essays for peer review and print publication as a supplement to a scholarly journal.

Virtual planning activities and travel to conduct fieldwork in Naples leading to a book on Italian engagement with the literary, cultural, and intellectual discourses of the 18th century. (12 months)

This NEH Planning International Collaboration Grant will fund two working group meetings of eighteenth-century scholars of the Italian peninsula to plan an interpretive volume of studies in English on the rethinking of eighteenth-century Italian culture and its transnational connections. With its emphasis on transmissions and reciprocities across borders, the transnational perspective has been redefining the parameters of eighteenth-century studies for the past twenty-five years. It is the goal of our project to establish a strong foothold for Italy in the cultural panorama of the transnational eighteenth century, altering our erroneous sense of a field that appears to be British and French driven. A comprehensive assessment of the significant shift in our understanding of the role of Italy in the global eighteenth century is lacking. Our project seeks to rectify this gap.

Planning and holding a conference on the roles of radio and listening in processes of decolonization in subaltern communities. (12 months)

This collaborative research convening project on radio and decolonization brings together an international cohort of scholars to produce and publish scholarship that will help radio archivists and producers, as well as scholars and students in a range of academic disciplines, to better understand and communicate the roles of radio broadcasting and listening in processes of decolonization. Its primary activity is to organize and host an interdisciplinary conference, which will include scholars with different points of view working in diverse fields including literary studies, music, history, sociology, anthropology, and media studies. The conference will be advertised to the public with attendance free of charge. Final outcomes include disseminating the conference via live streamed video, which will be recorded and uploaded to YouTube and linked to the conference website; paper abstracts; and short videos of the participants discussing the primary sources and material objects.

Writing of a book that describes a digital archiving project based in Puerto Rico and its contributions to disaster studies and the digital humanities. (24 months)

“Archiving Puerto Rico: Digital Memory and the Temporalities of Disaster” explores the intersections of critical disaster studies, digital humanities, and lived experiences in the Puerto Rican archipelago, utilizing the non-hierarchical collaborative strategies of AREPR. The proposed volume, composed of six chapters and an afterword, incorporates contributions from AREPR’s team members and community partners that are grounded in new theories of digital humanities and disaster studies that emerged from the project. Authors explore post-custodial archiving practices used in building AREPR’s digital repository that allow community partners and academics to cocreate research and collaboratively design project outputs. Related topics sit at the nexus of participatory design, memory work, social and climate justice, and digital time. Archiving Puerto Rico provides a framework for scholars, cultural institutions, and community organizations to develop similar collaborative projects.

Research and writing of a co-authored book revealing the stories of Cubans who fought in the Angolan Civil War. (36 months)

“All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.” -- Viet Thanh Nguyen. From 1975 to 1991, over 450,000 Cubans participated in a civil war in Angola that became one of the many arenas of the Cold War. The Cuban state-constructed narrative about the war tells a story of heroism and sacrifice to pay back the debt of slavery and help end apartheid in South Africa. But how do the Cubans, who participated in the war, many of whom today live in the United States, remember their experiences and make sense of what they witnessed? Our manuscript will explore these memories. It will be based on archival research and 75 oral history interviews, including ten in-depth case studies. Given the dominance of the Cuban government’s ideological, heroic and racialized narratives about the war, these grassroots testimonies gathered in Cuba and in the diaspora (mainly South Florida) will offer a more nuanced and complex understanding of the war experiences.

Preparation of a series of peer-reviewed articles on the semantics of emotion in Latin texts from 200 BCE to 1700 CE, creation of a linguistic database and development of Latin corpora. (36 months)

We are applying for Manuscript Preparation funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Collaborative Research program for a mixed-methods study of psychology and emotion in Latin texts over two millennia. Leveraging the interdisciplinary backgrounds of our project team, which span classical philology, history of emotions, psychology, anthropology, data science, and natural language processing, we will explore key questions concerning the construction and operation of emotions in historical texts and how they reflect the psychological evolution of individuals and societies. Central to these efforts will be the creation of high-quality infrastructure and tools, including large diachronic Latin corpora, datasets profiling the semantics of emotions, and reproducible computational pipelines. Our work will be described in a coherent series of peer-reviewed articles targeted to a diverse range of audiences, all of which will be submitted by the end of the grant period in 2026.

A digital repository of findings and research templates based on humanistic research on the simulation of human language, communication, art, and culture by AI software. (36 months)

The Design Justice Labs are conceived as a networked scholarly digital project that connects researchers and students with community partners in the US, Australia, and South Africa to develop and share research on the “AI” modeling of human languages, communication, arts, and cultures (“generative AI”). Inspired by design justice principles as elaborated by Costanza-Chock (2020), our labs center groups that are marginalized by design processes. Rutgers will focus on large language models (LLMs) through “probing” experiments that assess bias and errors; explore the tendency for homogeneity and normalization in AI-generated storytelling; and propose new humanities-inflected benchmarks for machine “understanding.” Australian National University (ANU) will work with large image models (LIMs) to explore their visual logics, and the modes of creativity and politics they enable or foreclose in the context of decolonial and contemporary arts and media practices. University of Pretoria (UP) will extend the capacity of research with, and data creation for, local African languages, while exploring the socio-cultural impacts of LLMs that marginalize these languages. (Edited by staff)

Research and writing leading to a digital project exploring the cultural, economic, and social influence of four theater districts in early modern London. (36 months) 

Shakespeare’s Theaterscape: London Playhouse Districts (1576–1642) is a scholarly digital project that couples theater history scholarship with GIS technology to better understand the place of particular playhouses within their urban contexts. This collaborative project by an international team of scholars centers on digital cartographic reconstructions of four discrete theatrical and entertainment districts in early modern London. A fully open-access website will feature these interactive maps, a collection of edited source materials on which the maps are based, and a series of interpretive essays exploring the implications of the research. The first phase of the project will be completed in September 2026.

Preparation of a co-authored book on the Indigenous history of northeast Florida. (36 months) 

We are applying for Manuscript Preparation with a completion date of December 2026. We propose to develop the first comprehensive Indigenous history of Northeast Florida. Our book challenges pervasive colonial triumphalist narratives that erase Indigenous peoples to focus solely on colonial “firsts”: the “first” Protestant colony (La Caroline, 1564-65) and the “first” and “oldest city” (St. Agustín, 1565) in the present-day United States. Centering the Timucua-speaking Mocamas, Yamasees, and Guales, we intend a cohesive Indigenous history that does not begin or end with colonization. We will demonstrate how Indigenous people shaped and survived colonialism, undermining prevailing myths of Indigenous “extinction.” Our study will transform not only regional but also national understandings of Indigenous history, European colonization, and Indigenous survivance—advancing the effort to craft inclusive narratives that reshape the understanding of scholarly and public audiences alike.