The Office of United States Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services have announced a virtual grants workshop set for Thursday, February 23rd. [Read more…] about Federal Grants Workshop for Arts and Cultural Organizations
NEH
Fort Ticonderoga Receives NEH Collections Planning Grant
Fort Ticonderoga has been named a recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for Humanities Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections program in the amount of $40,000.
The funds are expected to be utilized to develop a Master Preservation and Storage Needs Plan for the collections of historical artifacts housed in the Thompson-Pell Research Center on Fort Ticonderoga’s 2,000-acre museum campus and historic site. [Read more…] about Fort Ticonderoga Receives NEH Collections Planning Grant
‘Humanities in the Public Square’ Grant Opportunity
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has announced a new grant opportunity called “Humanities in the Public Square” that will put humanities scholars in direct dialogue with the public on some of the most pressing issues of today – through public forums, community programs, and the development of educational resources.
This new grant opportunity is part of the National Endowment for the Humanities’ agency-wide initiative The Common Good: The Humanities in the Public Square, which seeks to demonstrate and enhance the role and significance of the humanities and humanities scholarship in public life. [Read more…] about ‘Humanities in the Public Square’ Grant Opportunity
‘Common Heritage’ Grant Program Announced
nehThe National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has announced a new grant program, called “Common Heritage,” that hopes to bring to light historical records and artifacts currently hidden in family attics and basements across the country and make them digitally available to the wider public.
NEH invites historical societies, libraries, archives, museums, colleges and other local institutions to apply for the Common Heritage grant program. Grants will support day-long events, organized by community cultural institutions, in which members of the public will be invited to share materials important to their family or community histories, such as photographs, artifacts, family letters, and works of art. [Read more…] about ‘Common Heritage’ Grant Program Announced
A Report From The Federal Grants Workshop
On November 12, 2014, at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, a federal grants workshop for arts and culture organizations was held through the auspices of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.
The half-day workshop was held to familiarize organizations with the funding opportunities available through the federal government. [Read more…] about A Report From The Federal Grants Workshop
NY Council for the Humanities Funding Threatened
The House of Representatives Appropriations Committee has scheduled a markup of the 2014 fiscal year Interior Appropriations bill for this Wednesday, July 31, 2013.
The New York Council for the Humanities is urging friends of the humanities to write today, to increase awareness of the potential consequences of proposed deep cuts (nearly 50%) to the National Endowment for the Humanities.
They’ve collected 129 letters of support and have a goal of gathering 150 letters by tomorrow, Wednesday. They have yet to receive letters the the following legislators: Bishop, Meeks, Meng, Nadler, Rangel, Serrano, Engel, Hanna and Slaughter. [Read more…] about NY Council for the Humanities Funding Threatened
Positions in Public Humanities Grants Available
Positions in Public Humanities, part of the National Endowment for the Humanities’ (NEH) America’s Historical and Cultural Organizations (AHCO) grant program, are intended to reinvigorate the interpretation of the humanities at museums and historical organizations.
As part of an AHCO grant request, organizations are invited to request a supplement for a Position in Public Humanities. This program supports two-year, entry-level positions at museums, historical societies, and historic sites for recent graduates of public humanities programs (MA or PhD) whose expertise is critical to a project’s success. [Read more…] about Positions in Public Humanities Grants Available
CCNY Early-Career Historians Win NEH Awards
Dr. Gregory Downs, associate professor of history, and Dr. Emily Greble, assistant professor of history at The City College of New York are recipients of faculty research awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The grants, announced by NEH December 9, will support book projects currently in development.
“The NEH fellowships are extremely competitive; only eight percent of applicants are successful. To have two early-career faculty members in the same department come up winners is remarkable,” said Dr. Geraldine Murphy, acting dean of humanities and the arts at CCNY, in congratulating them.
“Our department has undergone significant growth because The City College administration made a commitment to bring in energetic scholars and teachers,” said Professor Downs, who serves as department chair. “We’ve hired eight new faculty members in nine years and we are seeing that faith pay off.”
“We seem to have become a hotbed of new and innovative scholarship,” added Professor Greble. “We see the product of this intellectually stimulating environment in so many areas of departmental life, from the number of students we have been placing in top doctoral programs to the rigorous publication record of our faculty, to the winning of top academic fellowships like the NEH and the Rome Prize.”
Four Class of 2011 history majors are now in PhD programs at Yale University, Princeton University and University of Michigan. Associate Professor of History Barbara Ann Naddeo received the Rome Prize in 2010 for her scholarship on the city of Naples, Italy. Assistant Professor of History Adrienne Petty is conducting an oral history project on African-American farm owners in the South in collaboration with Professor Mark Schultz of Lewis University supported by an NEH award.
Professor Downs’ project, “The Ends of War: American Reconstruction and the Problems of Occupation,” examines the transition from Civil War to Reconstruction and asks why former slaves, loyal whites, Freedmen’s Bureau agents and northern émigrés became disillusioned. The problems emanated not as much from free-labor ideology or racism as from a sharp reduction of military force in the region, which resulted in a power vacuum, he contends.
At the end of the Civil War, the U.S. government, fearing budget deficits, demobilized at such a rapid pace that within 18 months only 12,000 troops remained in the former Confederacy. As the military withdrew from different areas, hundreds of small wars broke out between former Confederates and organized freedmen.
Professor Downs attributes the situation to a naïve belief among elected officials in Washington that they could expand voting rights in the South at the same time that the federal government was reducing its presence there to cut the budget. “What was needed was not an expansion of democracy, but an expansion of enforcement,” he says. “Both sides figured out that violence was the logical conclusion. By the time they had mobilized it was too late for the government to act.”
The project grows out of an earlier monograph, “Declarations of Independence: The Long Reconstruction of Popular Politics in the South, 1860 – 1908,” published in 2011 by University of North Carolina Press. However, Professor Downs says his thinking has been influenced by recent U.S. experience with occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“Seeing how difficult it is to change social power, create new lines of authority and disrupt societies makes me wonder why we were so confident we could do it in the post-war South. Rights need enforceability to make them real,” he adds, pointing to the intervention by federal troops in the Little Rock Central High School in 1957 as an example.
Professor Greble’s project, “Islam and the European Nation-State: Balkan Muslims between Mosque and State, 1908 – 1949,” examines how South Slavic Muslims adapted to six significant political shifts over a 41-year period. In each instance new governments sought – in their own way – to limit, secularize and shape Muslim institutions as the region went from Ottoman to Habsburg control, to liberal nation-states, to authoritarian monarchs, to fascist regimes and to socialist regimes.
Her initial research suggests Muslims proactively adapted the norms and customs of their faith to define Islam in their own terms. Additionally, they sought to become part of the international community of Muslims to confront being dispossessed of property, Sharia law, institutional autonomy and the right to define Islam.
To assert their influence, some Muslims formed political parties and cultural societies that promoted Muslim cultural agendas. More conservative members of the community sought to strengthen and protect local Muslim networks through codification of Sharia law and Islamic society. Others engaged in clandestine activities such as underground madrassas.
Much of Professor Greble’s research will examine the changing role of Sharia courts. Under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, these were codified and given jurisdiction over Muslim socio-religious affairs, such as marriage, divorce and inheritance. Muslim parts of the Balkans, particularly Yugoslavia, retained this legal autonomy between the two world wars and during Nazi and fascist occupation, but lost it after communists came to power and shut down the Sharia courts in 1946.
Revolution Exhibit Funded For Travel
The New-York Historical Society has announced that the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded it a grant of $400,000 to support a traveling program and educational initiatives surrounding its new exhibition Revolution! The Atlantic World Reborn.
Revolution! is the first museum exhibition to explore the revolutions in America, France and Haiti as a single grand narrative from 1763 to 1815, tracing their cumulative transformation of politics, society and culture across the Atlantic world. It will also be the first major history exhibition to be presented by the New-York Historical Society when it fully re-opens its galleries on November 11, 2011, after a three-year, $65 million renovation.
“The New-York Historical Society is deeply grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities for this very generous endorsement of our mission, which is to engage the broadest possible public in the enjoyment of learning about history,” said Louise Mirrer, President and CEO of the New-York Historical Society. “Through this grant, we will be able to extend the reach of Revolution! and make it accessible to a much wider audience.”
The NEH has awarded the grant through its “America’s Historical & Cultural Organizations Implementation Grant” program, which supports museum exhibitions, library-based projects, interpretation of historic places or areas, websites and other project formats that excite and inform thoughtful reflection upon culture, identity and history.
Revolution! traces how an ideal of popular sovereignty, introduced through the American fight for independence, soon sparked more radical calls for a recognition of universal human rights and set off attacks on both sides of the Atlantic against hereditary privilege and slavery. Among the astonishing, unforeseen outcomes was an insurrection on the French possession of Saint-Domingue, leading to the world’s only successful slave revolt and the establishment in 1804 of the first nation founded on the principles of full freedom and equality for all, regardless of color.
K-12 Teachers Invited to Summer Residential Program
Niagara University is now accepting applications from K-12 teachers nationwide for a summer program entitled Crossroads of Empire: Cultural Contact and Imperial Rivalry at Old Fort Niagara. The week-long residential sessions, which take place July 11-15 and July 18-22, 2011 at Old Fort Niagara and Niagara University, have been made possible by funding obtained from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). [Read more…] about K-12 Teachers Invited to Summer Residential Program