Funded Projects Query Form
190 matches

Research and writing of a book about artistic collaboration between writers, dancers, artists, and art collectors in Chicago from the 1930s through the 1950s, including Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), Katherine Dunham (1909-2006), and Carlos Mérida (1891-1985).

"Eye to Eye" tells stories of artistic collaboration between writers Richard Wright and Gertrude Stein; dancer Ruth Page and sculptor Isamu Noguchi; curator Katharine Kuh and artist Carlos Mérida; and dancer Katherine Dunham and art collector Bernard Berenson. The idea behind the book is that the creation of new, often hybrid artistic forms requires a risk that is not just aesthetic but often very personal. By illuminating conversations, disagreements, impasses, and revisions, my aim is to tell the story of artistic process, the historical as well as intimate contingencies that shape the production of art, the physical and intellectual "work behind the work." The book focuses on the early 1930s through the 1950s, before the transformations of the women’s movement or the major social changes of the 1960s. During the economic strains of the Great Depression, the repressions of McCarthyism, and the violence of Jim Crow, what kinds of relationships could be equalitarian, reciprocal, equal?

A series of public programs celebrating the 250^th anniversary of the founding of the United States and its role in similar events in Latin American nations.

The Newberry Library seeks an NEH Humanities Discussions grant to support “¡Vivan las Revoluciones!: Forming More Perfect Unions Across the Americas.” In a series of twelve public programs, scholars, writers, artists, and community members will explore the complex histories and ongoing legacies of the Age of Revolutions across the Americas, inaugurated by the revolution of 1776. The confluence of the approaching 250th anniversary of the United States’ founding with the bicentennial commemorations in the early 2020s of independence for many Latin American nations provides a perfect opportunity to reflect on and reevaluate the vibrant, complex shared histories of the freedom struggles of the peoples of the Americas.

Planning of an exhibition that illustrates how mapping and the shared experience of travel has shaped the American identity.

The Newberry Library requests $39,950 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support planning of the exhibition, Crossings: Mapping, Migration, and Tourism in the United States. Using maps, guidebooks, and travel accounts, Crossings will present a historical and geographic panorama of Americans “on the road” and illustrate how mapping and the shared experience of travel on four enduring pathways, or “crossings,” has shaped their American identity. The exhibition will be on view at the library in Spring 2022. NEH funding will provide partial support for planning the exhibition, associated publications and web resources, public programs, and programs for K-12 educators and students. This planning grant will enable the curator to engage three consulting scholars and two educational consultants; finalize the exhibition checklist; draft the exhibition script; work with exhibition designers; and plan for producing a gallery guide, web resources, and curricular materials.

A four-week seminar for 16 K-12 teachers to study mapping as a lens for understanding the history of the Americas.

The Newberry Library’s Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography seeks funding for a four-week summer seminar for sixteen schoolteachers in 2020 that traces the interplay between mapping and environmental knowledge across Pan-American history. Mapping Nature across the Americas, led by James Akerman and Kathleen Brosnan, will emphasize how map study can provide insights into the complicated, contradictory, and contested ways in which humans conceived their place in nature through history. The seminar will be distinctive in its use of maps as the core texts for this exploration, emphasizing the development of teachers’ skills in the use of maps in their classroom teaching as they consider how mapping has represented and transformed human conceptions of nature over time. This seminar builds on our experience leading a summer institute on the same topic for college and university faculty in 2014.

Implementation of a city-wide series of eleven public programs and development of digital resources exploring the history and aftermath of the Chicago race riots of July 1919 on the centenary.

The Newberry Library, in partnership with ten Chicago cultural organizations, seeks an NEH Community Conversations grant to support Chicago Reflects on the 1919 Race Riots. This city-wide series of 11 conversations and four digital resources will address the searing events of Chicago’s summer of 1919, when white fear of black migration, coupled with volatile economic conditions, sparked violence. Our proposal joins, for the first time, major cultural institutions and several smaller, award-winning, community-based non-profits. Together, we propose a varied and creative lineup of community conversations proposed aimed at racially, ethnically, and generationally diverse audiences across the city. Our events encompass a wide range of formats, including thoughtfully mediated conversations, film premieres, youth poetry slams, and a bike tour. Each provides opportunities to consider how humanistic work from past and present has responded to 1919 and reflected upon its legacies.

A four-week seminar for 16 college and university faculty on the impact of the digital revolution on map literacy and humanities research and teaching with material maps.

The Newberry Library's Smith Center for the History of Cartography seeks NEH support for a four-week summer seminar for 16 college and university faculty in 2019 that will consider how humanities research with material maps, and map literacy itself, is being transformed by the challenges and opportunities posed by the digital revolution. In many respects, reading historic maps and using them in research and teaching is easier and more productive in the digital age. However, the visual qualities of map documents that can be transmitted electronically do not displace the need to understand them and nor should they supplant the study of maps as material objects. These assertions, and their implications for higher education and humanities scholarship, lie at the heart of Material Maps in the Digital Age, a four-week seminar led by Dr. James Akerman and Dr. Peter Nekola, featuring discussion and research immersed in the Newberry’s extensive and renowned collection of historic maps.

A three-week institute for twenty-five college and university faculty to explore the role of the arts in urban life, using Chicago as a case study.

The Newberry Library proposes a 3-week summer 2018 institute for college and university faculty that will explore the role of the arts in the civic life of Chicago. Art and Public Culture in Chicago will look closely at the arts, their reception, and their civic import in Chicago from the 1893 World’s Fair through the present moment. We are particularly interested in artistic communities, small-scale venues, and vernacular expressions that developed against or alongside Chicago’s mainstream cultural institutions. We seek to understand how audiences are created out of cultural activity, and what kinds of civic participation the arts call into being. The institute will be led by experts in art history, literature, American studies, African American studies, and creative arts, and will include site visits to Chicago neighborhoods, arts organizations, museums, and archives. Participants will also engage with a rich array of primary sources in the Newberry’s collection.

A four-week institute for college and university teachers to study modernist literary and artistic expression through the collections of the Newberry Library and various sites in Chicago.

The Newberry proposes a 4-week NEH summer institute that will explore Chicago’s contribution to the modernist movement, with particular attention given to literature. The institute will begin with the persistent cultural resonances of the 1893 World’s Fair and will end with mid-century representations of African-American experiences in literature and the visual arts. The institute aims for an inclusive and expansive history of modernist literature and art in Chicago across racial lines. Four themes will be emphasized: the geographic uniqueness of Chicago as both a Midwestern and international hub; the historically overlooked women in Chicago who built the city’s literary and cultural infrastructure; the connections between the “literary renaissance” of the 1910s and early 1920s and the Chicago Black Renaissance; and modernism’s distinctive production and reception history in Chicago. Participants will engage the Newberry’s vast collections and the experience of the city itself.

A five-week seminar for sixteen college and university faculty to explore the scholarly connections between mapping, texts, and travel.

The Newberry Library’s Hermon Smith Center for the History of Cartography seeks funding for a five-week summer seminar for college and university faculty in 2016 that will examine the interplay between mapping and the history and literary culture of travel from the fifteenth through the twentieth centuries. "Mapping, Text, and Travel," led by James Akerman (The Newberry Library) and Jordana Dym (Skidmore College) will discuss the relationship between mapping, wayfinding, describing, and narrating the experience of travel as manifested in separately published maps, atlases, guidebooks, travel narratives, and travel fiction. Drawing on the Newberry's rich holdings of cartography, travel accounts, and guidebooks, the seminar will offer 16 participants an opportunity to cross disciplinary, regional, and chronological boundaries to reflect on the ways in which mapping has shaped travelers’ imagination and the experience of place and landscape, of identity and history, and of time and space.

A five-week institute for twenty college and university faculty to explore connections between mapping and environmental knowledge in the Americas from the contact period to the twenty-first century.

The Newberry Library's Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography seeks NEH support for a five-week summer institute for college and university faculty 2014 that traces the interplay between mapping and environmental knowledge across the Americas from the transatlantic encounter into the twenty-first century. The institute, Mapping Nature across the Americas, led by James Akerman and Kathleen Brosnan, will examine in a Pan-American context the complicated, contradictory, and contested ways in which humans mapped and conceived their place in nature through history. The institute will be distinctive in its use of maps as the core texts for this intellectual exploration, and for the ways it will consider how mapping has both captured and transformed human conceptions of nature over time. It will feature six guest faculty members, specialists in the history of cartography, environmental history, geography, US history, and Latin American history.

A four-week institute for twenty-five college and university teachers on modernism in Chicago in the first half of the twentieth century.

The Newberry Library proposes a 4-week summer 2013 institute for college and university faculty that will explore Chicago’s literary and cultural centrality in the twentieth century. The institute will begin by considering the cultural resonances of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition and end by analyzing mid-century literary representations of African-American experience. It will be led by renowned scholars in the fields of literature, history, art history, print culture, and African-American studies. Four themes will be emphasized: the geographic centrality of Chicago both locally and internationally; modernism’s distinctive reception history in Chicago; the women in Chicago who served as key cultural arbiters; and the connections between the Chicago Renaissance and the Chicago Black Renaissance. Participants will engage with Newberry collections in order to understand the hidden networks that contributed to the explosion of cultural styles associated with the modernist period.

A cooperative agreement for a multi-year professional and curriculum development project for faculty and administrators from five community colleges on religious pluralism in America.

The Newberry Library requests funding for a Bridging Cultures at Community Colleges project entitled “Out of Many: Religious Pluralism in America.” The project’s objective is to provide community college faculty with the necessary knowledge and skills to improve instruction on American religious pluralism, thus contributing to the goals of the NEH’s “Bridging Cultures” initiative. Under this program, Newberry staff in the Dr. William M. Scholl Center for American History and Culture will convene multi-day summer seminars in 2012 and 2013 that will bring together twenty community college faculty to explore American religious pluralism through discussions with scholars in the field, public programs, and collaborative research focused on curriculum development.

My book places Chicago at the center of a new modernist geography. Based upon archival research, my book focuses on writers, artists, institutions, and cultural advocates during the early twentieth century when Chicago was a center for the production of modernist art and literature. I examine key publications launched in Chicago like Harriet Monroe's POETRY magazine and Margaret Anderson's LITTLE REVIEW and I also take account of equally important yet overlooked figures, many of them women, who helped expose modernism to a wide public audience. These figures (among many) include Alice Roullier, a curator who coolly negotiated radical and challenging exhibits, and Fanny Butcher, the longtime literary editor of the Chicago Tribune. I consider why Chicago's "middlebrow" readers embraced the most experimental writers and artists of the era. I show how Chicago has always maximized connections between art and industry, becoming a city where lines of track merged to meet and make modernism.

The arrangement and description of the records of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad comprising 2,760 linear feet of primary sources for the years 1840-1965, documenting the history of the company and several of its subsidiaries.

The Newberry Library proposes to reappraise, arrange, preserve, describe, and make electronically accessible the records (2,760 linear feet) of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company (CB&Q), 1847-1965. The CB&Q was one of the largest and most significant railroads in the country, controlling transportation over much of the nation between the Mississippi River and the Rockies, and the firm's records are an important resource for scholarship in a wide variety of disciplines. This project will make the CB&Q records physically accessible, and will employ current descriptive standards and exploit the capabilities of Encoded Archival Description to improve intellectual access and attract a diverse community of users.

One two-day conference for fifty-four high school teachers in the Midwest during summer 2010 to strengthen the use of Picturing America images in core subjects.

The Newberry Library, in collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago, proposes to host a regional Picturing America School Collaboration Project Conference, which will provide 54 teachers from the Midwest the opportunity to engage with other, with experts in art history, history, literature, and geography, and to access Chicago's rich local resources in American art. Our conference will take "Interpreting the American Landscape" as a capacious and inclusive organizing theme. Our conference session will explore the role of landscape imagery in shaping national identity, tracing the shift from nineteenth-century emphasis on visions of pristine wilderness and rural landscapes to the twentieth century's urban scenery. The conference will be held at the Newberry Library and the Art Institute of Chicago on August 19 - 20, 2010. The target audience will be secondary-level history, language arts, and art teachers whose schools already have received the Picturing America portfolio.

Creation of an online archive of 250 historic maps and a guide for the study of American travel, transportation, and wayfinding mapping.

The Newberry Library seeks to create an online archive and guide for the study, interpretation, and educational use of American travel, transportation, and wayfinding mapping. Building on the collections and curatorial strength of the library, this resource, titled "Mapping Movement in American History and Culture," will familiarize researchers, students, and the general public with the historic value of American maps of movement by providing an archive of high resolution images together with a set of interpretive frameworks, improving access to these maps through the creation of complementary research tools. The initial phase of this project will produce three elements: (1) an archive of 250 high resolution images of historic maps of movement; (2) 25 interpretive essays providing guidance to the study and interpretation of these maps; and (3) a guide to collections of historic transportation maps, finding aids, and online resources in historic transportation mapping.

A five-week college and university teacher institute for twenty-five participants to explore the relationship between art and mapping in the Americas.

The Newberry Library's Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography seeks NEH support for a 5-week summer institute for college faculty that will scrutinize the interplay between American art and mapping from the Transatlantic Encounter into the 21st century. The institute, led by James Akerman (Dir. of Smith Center) and Diane Dillon (Asst. Dir. of Research & Education) will feature a guest faculty of 14 specialists in art, cartography, geography, philosophy, American history, map librarianship, and literary studies. The institute's program of lectures, seminars, workshops, and research will encourage 25 participants to cross disciplinary boundaries and move beyond regional and chronological specialties to address the complex history of the relationship between art and mapping in and of the Americas. Participants will also pursue their own projects and explore unfamiliar primary materials, including the Newberry's rich holdings in the humanities.

The equivalent of three fellowships per year for two years.

The Newberry Library requests funding for three years of publicity and three years of fellowship support to continue a highly successful program of residential humanities fellowships at the Newberry Library. Over three decades this program has generated a rich harvest of humanities scholarship while also serving as a catalyst for the creation of a dynamic intellectual community within this research institution. This proposal details the achievements and impact of the program and outlines the Library's procedures for publicizing the program, selecting the fellows,and fostering their scholarly activities.

Two-day conferences in October 2009 and April 2010, for fifty-four educators each, to strengthen the use of Picturing America images in the teaching of core subjects, primarily in high schools. (Ashbrook)

The Newberry Library proposes to host two Picturing America School Collaboration Project Conferences, which will provide one hundred and eight teachers with access to each other; to experts in art history, history, literature, and geography; and to Chicago's rich local resources in American art. Our conferences will take "Interpreting the American Landscape" as a capacious and inclusive organizing theme. Our conference sessions will explore the role of landscape imagery in shaping national identity, tracing the shift from a nineteenth-century emphasis on visions of pristine wilderness and rural landscapes to the twentieth-century's urban and industrial scenery. The conferences will be held at the Newberry Library on October 23-24, 2009, and April 16-17, 2010. The nationwide target audience will be secondary-level history, language arts, and art teachers whose schools already have received the Picturing America portfolio.

Implementation of an interactive website on the cultures and history of the Indian tribes of the Midwest and on the changes and issues they have faced over time.

The Indians of the Midwest website is designed as an interactive and content site that will share scholarly research on the history and cultures of American Indians in the Midwest with the general public. It will serve as a resource for members of diverse audiences seeking context for controversial issues involving American Indians, such as conflicts over gaming, the disposition of archaeological sites and objects, fishing rights, or sports mascots. This project is designed to contribute to public discussion on topics relating to Indians of the Midwest by making recent academic research more accessible to the general public, and by providing a vehicle for ongoing conversations between scholars and online communities of users via existing and developing social networking sites. The information on the site is organized around several broad themes that continue to resonate today, but whose roots in the complex history of the region and its people are often misunderstood in public debate.

A three-week summer seminar for fifteen school teachers on learning to "read" historical and contemporary maps.

In the summer of 2009 The Newberry Library will invite 15 schoolteachers from throughout the U.S. to develop their cartographic literacy and their ability to use maps effectively in their classrooms through a 3 week course of map study, discussion, and research. The seminar, co-directed by James Akerman and Gerry Danzer, will pursue readings of historic and contemporary maps as windows into the worlds from which they emerged. During their residence, seminar participants will follow a program of readings of recent scholarship in the history of cartography, practical workshops, and field trips designed to help participants read and use map documents effectively in personal research and teaching. Most importantly, participants will engage in intensive reading and analysis of original map documents from the Library's renowned collection of historic maps, and pursue research projects that will have a tangible impact on teaching cartographic literacy in their own classrooms.

Three fellowships a year for two years.

This proposal requests funding for three years of publicity and three years of fellowships to continue a highly successful program of residential humanities fellowships at the Newberry Library. Over three decades, this program has generated a rich and documented harvest of humanities scholarship while serving as a catalyst for the creation of a dynamic intellectual community within this research institution. The proposal details the achievements and impact of the program and outlines the library's procedures for publicity, selection, and orientation of fellows.

Digitization of 19 printed volumes of the "Atlas of Historical County Boundaries," a reference work designed to provide information about the creation and boundary changes of every county in the United States, from the 1600s to 2000. The project would create Web-based interactive maps as well as distribute the data for integration into a geographic information system (GIS).

Planning of an interactive, multi-media website about the history and cultures of American Indians in the Midwest.

Implementation of a photo-panel exhibition, based on the Newberry Library's larger exhibition about the encounters of native peoples with Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery, 1804-06, to travel to 23 sites throughout the U.S.

The Newberry Library is applying for an NEH Implementation grant to fund a traveling panel exhibition "Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country: 200 Years of American History" based upon an exhibition of the same name developed by the Newberry Library (Chicago, IL) and on display from September 28, 2005 through January 14, 2006. The traveling exhibition will include photographic reproductions of approximately 60 items from the original exhibition, and travel to 23 libraries nationwide. A comprehensive Site Support Notebook will provide host libraries with resource lists and other tools for developing public programming based on the themes and topics of the exhibition. An extensive website and resource book (University of Illinois Press, forthcoming) will supplement these materials.