Course revision and curriculum development in Civic Studies and in programs for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated students.

NEH funding will cultivate a partnership between Tufts University’s Civic Studies program and the Tufts University Prison Initiative of Tisch College (TUPIT) by supporting Tufts humanities faculty developing and delivering curriculum for people with lived experience of incarceration. By teaching courses to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people working towards a bachelor’s degree – inside prisons, in a re-entry-focused community center program, and at Tufts – often in tandem with Tufts campus students, humanities faculty will provide severely at-risk students who are also disenfranchised citizens with a pathway program that cultivates increased civic knowledge and a new capacity for community engagement. NEH funds will allow us to develop syllabi, scholarly and journalistic writing, and hold a Civic Humanities and Decarceration conference. This laboratory for public scholarship in the humanities will promote its under-represented scholars.

The development of undergraduate and graduate curricula in Manuscript, Rare Book and Archive Studies.

This is a proposal to launch a Committee on Manuscript, Rare Book and Archive Studies (MARBAS) at Princeton University. MARBAS is the initiative of a group of faculty and library staff devoted to teaching with original objects from global cultures before 1600, including manuscripts, documents, early printed books, papyri, coins, inscriptions and archives. Our goals are to bring students into contact with premodern texts and objects, to make specialized techniques (including digital methods) accessible to an expanded pool of instructors and non-specialists, to encourage comparison, and to make the use of physical evidence central to the humanities. We will help make the techniques for teaching with objects widely accessible, develop and distribute tools for undergraduate and graduate teaching with original artifacts, and make these tools scalable and replicable with or without physical access to special collections, whether due to geography, resources or travel restrictions.

Three summer symposia for three faculty cohorts to incorporate place-based humanities perspectives on the history and culture of the Rochester, NY, region into their curriculum.

St. John Fisher College (SJFC) proposes to create up to 18 new humanities core courses, which intentionally embed a place-based humanities perspective. Place-based humanities is an interdisciplinary humanistic inquiry that focuses on the interconnection of geography; local history; community; and cultural, social, and personal identity. Rochester, NY has been the site of critical intellectual American ideas, from abolitionism to women’s rights. While home to leaders such as Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony, the city’s significance plays but a small part in scholarly understanding of these iconic figures. The project objectives are as follows: 1) create spaces for critical conversation around race focused on place-based humanistic texts, while promoting interest in the humanities; 2) embed the teaching of place-based humanities in the core curriculum; and 3) disseminate a place-based humanities pedagogy with other faculty at SJFC and beyond.

A professional and curricular development program on the relationship and history of the United States and Micronesia for 60 university faculty and secondary school teachers in Guam.

This project, Toward a More Perfect Union: Teaching and Learning in Micronesia, explores the relationship and history between the United States and Micronesia and the impact on the Guam community, specifically in teaching and learning within the classroom setting. This project provides a seminar for full-time and adjunct faculty at the University of Guam, with spaces reserved for secondary teachers. Looking through the lens of island centered pedagogy, the modules will enhance participants’ understanding of: 1) history; 2) philosophy, spirituality and religion; 3) culture, tradition, and way of life; 4) art, literature, and storytelling; and 5) the connection of these topics to teaching and learning in the Guam classroom. The seminar’s readings, films, and discussions will lead to improvement in teaching and learning on Guam, and the development of a resource guide for all faculty members and teachers.

A curricular collaboration project to reconceptualize the research and teaching of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

The State University of New York at Cortland (SUNY Cortland), a comprehensive liberal arts college within the 64-campus State University of New York system, proposes leading a multi-campus faculty study group with 20 historians whose research and teaching interests include the period in American history commonly referred to as the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, or GAPE. Led by Dr. Kevin Sheets and Dr. Randi Storch, the project brings together participants and invited scholars to assess the state of the field; to incorporate the latest research into new and revised courses; and to develop and disseminate resources for high school and college-level instructors.

The development and implementation of a new summer bridge program and first-year writing curriculum focused on Alabama history, for students in Alabama correctional facilities.

The Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project (APAEP) at Auburn University (AU) offers quality educational experiences to those inside of state correctional facilities in Alabama. APAEP is proposing a redesign and implementation of year-long Alabama History-themed writing program for incoming first-year college students at Staton Men's Correctional Facility and Tutwiler Prison for Women. First-year APAEP students will have a greater understanding of Alabama history from their unique place and time, and will imagine their current and future contributions to their state's history. Faculty and students based at the AU main campus will serve as instructors and peer tutors to APAEP students, thereby building the connection between APAEP students and the greater AU community.

A three-year project to develop a health humanities minor.

Bucknell University’s Health Humanities Working Group proposes the development of a new interdisciplinary minor in the health humanities as a means of revitalizing the liberal arts core, expanding students’ humanistic knowledge of health, and contributing to the University’s already well-situated rural and community partnerships. The minor will have three basic components: 1) a gateway course entitled Humanizing Health; 2) three electives drawn from different humanities departments; and 3) a capstone experience placing students in civic engagement with our rural local communities. Funded activities include summer workshops; curricular development grants; funding for the program director; and external review. Through its emphasis on the urgency of the health humanities for all students--not just those pursuing careers in biomedicine--this project will amplify the humanities’ contribution to understanding health, illness, and medicine within our campus and our regional communities.

A three-year project to develop an undergraduate laboratory space and related curriculum that would engage students in the study of global print and manuscript cultures.

We seek to establish a dedicated undergraduate laboratory space anchored in the world-leading University of Iowa Center for the Book. Further, we propose to develop an undergraduate curriculum that will flourish in the envisioned workspace. The heart of the curricular proposal is a new introductory course in global print cultures, paired with an existing course on global manuscript cultures. Our goals are threefold: 1) to create and sustain spaces where students learn how material texts from diverse cultural traditions were made; 2) by integrating hands-on making into students’ education, to deepen their understanding of key humanities themes, such as the interpretation of texts and how humans transform, reinterpret, and sustain artifacts and ideas over time and across cultures; & 3) to strengthen the humanities at Iowa by building collaborative connections between faculty, curators, book artists, engineers, scientists, and librarians teaching with material texts across the university.

Design and implementation of a Fort Lewis College summer Native American language institute. 

This project promotes Native American cultural and linguistic revitalization efforts through a theme-based language learning approach that centers Native American beliefs on animacy. This approach centers Native American ways of being to promote not only revitalization of Native languages but also related cultural revitalization, as Native languages describe a world in action and worldview. This approach encourages Native self-identity and furthers awareness of oneself in relation to the world from a Native perspective. We encourage and stimulate Native language learning that excites eager learners to take on the monumental task of learning a language facing extinction and fraught with challenges related to the effects of colonialism. To change the course of language loss, we encourage learners of all abilities, confront shame, and guilt in the process, and incite the needed fanaticism for one to learn their Native language at Fort Lewis College in Durango, CO.

The creation of digital resources for teaching William Faulkner’s fiction, followed by their integration into pilot courses for undergraduate and high school students.  

Teaching and Learning William Faulkner in the Digital Age seeks to harness the resources of the NEH-funded Digital Yoknapatawpha project for classroom teachers at the high school, community college, and four-year college levels by creating targeted lesson plans that help teachers apply the data tools of Digital Yoknapatawpha to specific Faulkner texts. The amount and configuration of data available in Digital Yoknapatawpha can be daunting for users unfamiliar with the digital humanities, and this project seeks to demystify digital humanities and help non-specialists use the site in teaching the most commonly assigned Faulkner short stories and novels though a series of virtual workshops.

The creation of open educational resources on the art, music, culture, and related history of New Orleans.  

Our purpose is to enhance college and university teaching by developing and sharing digital resources on art, music, history, politics, and culture in New Orleans. Our curriculum will be divided into modules that can be adapted in courses across the humanities and interpretive social sciences. Modules will combine original performance and demonstration videos with archival documents, photographs, and field recordings—all annotated with an eye to form, history, context, and technique. We are an outgrowth of a community institution in the Seventh Ward of New Orleans, Neighborhood Story Project, but our network of collaborators includes academics from sectors across higher education at various ranks and career stages as well as independent scholars, curators, archivists, artists, musicians, and culture bearers.

The development of a curricular project focused on the Oak Woods Cemetery, located on Chicago’s South Side.

This is an interdisciplinary, collaborative teaching initiative, using a historic cemetery as a basis for curriculum that focuses on the multifarious histories of the South Side of Chicago, in particular the histories of Jews and African Americans and the interactions between them. Exploring the theme of “A More Perfect Union,” it invites students to engage with the interrelation between race, religion, ethnicity, immigration status, and socio-economic factors, as they have shaped the area. We also aim to develop curricular material that can be used by others, in particular strategies and materials for teaching with and around historical cemeteries, and site-specific teaching about urban history more broadly. Building on existing UChicago courses and programs, and through partnerships with local educational and cultural institutions, this new model will become a permanent feature of the College curriculum at the University and can serve as a platform for similar initiatives elsewhere.

A three-year curricular and faculty development project in conjunction with the Seneca Nation to incorporate the teaching of Native American and Indigenous Studies into general education classes required for all first-year students.

St. Bonaventure University (SBU) in southwest New York State proposes “Native American and Indigenous Studies in the General Education Curriculum,” an initiative that will enhance Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS), strengthen humanities teaching and learning on campus, and further develop a mutually beneficial relationship with the nearby Seneca Nation of Indians. The proposed project, which will reach all incoming students annually, will include (1) the creation of six modules for incorporation into all sections of two required, first-year, first-semester general education course co-requisites, (2) three faculty professional development workshops featuring external NAIS experts, and (3) recurring campus events featuring guest speakers and cultural heritage knowledge keepers. Oleg V. Bychkov, director of SBU’s NAIS program, will serve as project director. Justin Schapp, a member of the Seneca Nation and adjunct professor of NAIS at SBU, will support project implementation.

A three-year grant to create digital and curricular materials related to the university’s development and impact on its neighborhood.

Recovering Auraria's Past is a three-year collaborative project with faculty and community members designed to collect, organize, and share existing course materials and research on the history of the Auraria neighborhood in Denver, Colorado. The current Auraria campus in downtown was built in the 1970s through the razing of a Chicano neighborhood and the displacement of over 300 families. This project examines the lasting impact of this displacement at its 50-year anniversary by creating a website that includes primary and secondary documents along with syllabi and lesson plans available to instructors across three campuses. The project will take on additional collecting work, including oral histories and culminate with a digital tour of campus that focuses on displaced Chicano community members. It will also include a faculty and graduate student reading club and lecture series welcoming scholars who address the racial reckoning on American university campuses.

An 18-month project to develop curricular modules focused on the 1862 expropriation of Native American lands in Wisconsin and their redistribution to land-grant universities in the state and nationwide.

This project will bring together Native and non-Native faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to create linked educational modules about the expropriation of Indigenous lands in what is now called Wisconsin. These modules will be embedded in a suite of UW-Madison undergraduate and graduate courses and shared with faculty at other land grant universities. This project centers on the transfer of 1,337,895 acres of land across Wisconsin taken through treaties with the Menomini (Menominee), Chippewa (Ojibwe), Sioux (Dakota), and Winnebago (Ho-Chunk) and redistributed to 30 land grant universities through the Morrill Act of 1862. The team will create 17 modules across three thematic areas, integrate those modules into 13 courses across six departments at UW-Madison, and share those modules with faculty at land grant institutions across the country.

A two-year project to expand the university’s Higher Education in Prison program.

We will design and implement a 6 course (24 credit hour) humanities sequence around the theme of Identity, Transformation and Agency for incarcerated women, trans-identified and gender nonconforming people at the Coffee Creek Correctional facility to enrich and expand Portland State University’s Higher Education in Prison Program. Faculty from six departments (Anthropology, Black Studies, Chicano & Latino Studies, English, Indigenous Nations Studies, and Philosophy) will participate in a community of practice to create student-centered, engaging, and rigorous curriculum along a Liberal Studies degree pathway.

A two-and-a-half-year project to develop an interdisciplinary program and minor in curatorial studies.

Hamilton College, a small liberal arts college in central New York, proposes a two-and-a-half year plan to develop a Curatorial Studies (CS) program and a new interdisciplinary minor. This initiative aims to foster connections across the humanities and other disciplines, and between the College and neighboring museums and archives.

A two-year project to create a minor program that centers on place-based approaches to studying trauma and local history. 

The Historical Trauma and Transformation (H2T) Minor uses place-based learning to cultivate a deep understanding of American and world history by exploring how collective trauma and the responses to it have shaped society and institutional structures. H2T will engage students in meaningful class discussions, hands-on research with archival materials, and excursions to museums and historic sites. The intention is for H2T courses to weave Tulsa history and resources together with place-based learning and community partnerships. Courses will examine contemporary social structures, values, and beliefs within the context of their historical roots that include a history of racism, colonization, forced migration, and/or genocide. Students will use trauma theory and an understanding of historical and intergenerational trauma transmission to address current-day problems. Students will learn how people and cultures survive, thrive, and transform trauma as they shape societal change.

A one-year project to design and implement a graduate certificate program in cultural heritage studies.

This is a proposal to develop and launch an Interdepartmental Certification for Matriculated Graduate Students in Tangible Cultural Heritage Research, Stewardship, and Restitution at the University of California, Los Angeles Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. The Waystation Certificate Program (WCP) will commence in the fall quarter of 2023. With NEH funds, the CIoA and the Waystation Program propose to establish a certificate for matriculated graduate students and related programming. A single year of funding will support the development and full implementation of the WCP. During this 12-month period our objectives are (1) to develop the certificate program curriculum; (2) to design and implement three workshops that will engage students, faculty, and stakeholders; (3) to launch the certificate program with the first cohort of students; (4) to build community and stakeholder engagement; and (5) to launch a small promotional campaign announcing the creation of the certificate program.

An 18-month project to develop curriculum on African American history and culture for undergraduate education majors and for in-service teachers in local school districts.

Project description: With NEH grant funds, Rowan University proposes to establish a Black Humanities in Education Through History and Culture (BHE) Initiative to support the development and instruction of content knowledge for preservice and in-service teachers. Humanities courses taught by faculty from History, English, and Philosophy will examine the rich history and culture of African Americans to foster a deeper understanding of the U.S. Black experience, with a particular focus on southern New Jersey. The objectives for BHE are threefold: 1) to embed the newly established, humanities-based Certificate of Undergraduate Study in African American Studies for Future Educators in the education curriculum; 2) to develop a hybrid, interdisciplinary humanities graduate course that examines the U.S. Black experience; and 3) to disseminate content knowledge and share the BHE Initiative with in-service teachers, preservice teachers and community participants.

A two-year project to develop an interdisciplinary course sequence for undergraduates on Americana music.

Taught as part of the newly redesigned Honors Scholars’ Collaborative, this project will teach a set of courses that will train students to engage with Americana music from the perspectives of two disciplines in the Humanities: religious studies and rhetoric. Through this lens, the project will allow for the creation of a template for supporting students in the University Honor's program in the development and implementation of a research project in a humanities topic.

A three-year project to revise an African American studies program.

Reimagining African American Studies at Illinois College will expand African American Studies through a public humanities approach, increase faculty expertise, develop curriculum, and improve community engagement. Project objectives include: (1) engaging at least 15 faculty members in two summer curriculum development institutes; (2) substantially revising or creating eight courses for the African American Studies minor that will also meet general education requirements; (3) creating at least seven humanities-focused African American Studies curriculum modules for use in non-humanities courses, especially in pre-professional disciplines; (4) supporting six undergraduates in a new community-based humanities internship at the new Jacksonville African American Museum; and (5) launching a half-day, annual Sankofa Symposium focused on African American history and culture. Dr. Brittney Yancy, assistant professor of history and African American Studies, will serve as the project director.

A three-year project to develop a set of teaching videos on medieval liturgy for students and faculty at Notre Dame, as well as the scholarly or lay community at large.

Medieval Liturgy: Tutorials for Students, Teachers, & Researchers is a website that offers instruction on how to read and interpret the ritual practices of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, not only in Europe, but also in other regions and in other times. In each of its main sections, leading authorities at the University of Notre Dame and elsewhere teach about specific topics through gradated series of videos and case studies. Our primary audience is faculty and undergraduate and graduate students at Notre Dame. The website will be used as a textbook in Medieval Latin Liturgy and Chant, an undergraduate course being developed by the project leaders for the university core curriculum. But its audience is ultimately greater than that found at Notre Dame. It includes scholars across the world who wish to study and teach the liturgy. It is critical to preserving knowledge about this foundational, interdisciplinary subject and to strengthening the humanistic disciplines.

A three-year project to develop a health humanities certificate program for undergraduates and professional community members.

This project will use two forthcoming Wittenberg programs, a minor and certificate in Heath Humanities and Equity as a launching point for a dynamic health humanities initiative that will 1) strengthen the teaching and learning of humanities at Wittenberg, 2) highlight the importance of humanistic inquiry in critical community efforts, and 3) connect students to robust experiential learning activities. The goal of the project is to facilitate access to humanities-based teaching and learning that will empower students and community members with the skills and habits necessary to understand and impact the life and health of the communities they live in ethical and equitable ways. The project has four objectives. Briefly, 1) to create a Health Humanities Faculty Fellowship, 2) to develop curriculum for the programs through faculty development, 3) to establish a Community Advisory group, and 4) to increase visibility and learning in Health Humanities in the community through workshops.

A two-year project to form a local humanities consortium that would facilitate experiential learning and public humanities projects within the undergraduate curriculum. 

Pace University requests $150,000 for The Ground Beneath Our Feet project to center place-based, experiential humanities in our undergraduate core curriculum and humanities degree programs. Recognizing the location of our Lower Manhattan campus on unceded Lenape land near the African Burial Ground–at the convergence of Chinatown, Civic Center, Financial District, and the Seaport–we will engage student participation and community collaboration in investigating the area’s previously obscured people, places, and events. A Lower Manhattan Humanities Consortium (LMHC)--including NYC Municipal Archives, American Indian Community House, Bowery Residents’ Committee, Billion Oyster Project, South Street Seaport Museum, and Trinity Church Archives–and Pace courses in ethnic and gender studies, language, literature, history, and peace and justice studies will uplift stories of marginalized people in the historical record through co-creation of digital humanities and public humanities projects.