Endowment for Junior/Post-Doctoral Fellowships, staff, and general programming at Emory's Center for Humanistic Inquiry.

Emory University's Center for Humanistic Inquiry (CHI), founded three years ago, seeks a $500,000 NEH Challenge Grant to build our endowment in our two major areas of endeavor, the CHI Fellows Programs, which support humanities research, and general programming, which promotes the humanities in the University and the larger community. To support its work as a residential research center, the CHI would use NEH endowment funding to 1) inaugurate a new Junior/Post-Doctoral Fellows Program of named fellowships, beginning with an NEH Junior/Post-Doctoral in Poetics, and 2) upgrade a current staff position to Fellows Coordinator. In the CHI's role as an originator and coordinator of humanities programming for the University and the general public, NEH endowment support would 1) underwrite our successful CHI interdisciplinary Research Seminars (CHIIRS) Program, 2) develop a new Great Works Seminar Series, and 3) expand public accessibility by establishing an NEH Humanities Initiative Fund for Public Programs for both series. This NEH Challenge Grant would allow us to expand our initiatives beyond the University into the larger community, beginning with the establishment of databases of local and regional contacts to target specific public constituencies for our programs. The $2,000,000 in matching funds will be raised as part of Emory University's new Capital Campaign, with this 4:1 match among the College's major campaign priorities. With plans for this Capital Campaign in the final stages, and with recent regional and national attention that has focused on both the arts and the humanities at Emory, the CHI is eager to build on this momentum. An NEH Challenge Grant now would allow us to seize this crucial opportunity to consolidate our successful programs and develop new public initiatives that would share Emory's rich scholarly resources in the humanities with the larger communities beyond our walls.