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.