By Cecily Hill
On January 11, the National Endowment for the Humanities announced 208 grants for humanities projects totaling $24.7 million. Notably, the grant release included grants from two recently-developed grant programs.
The NEH/AHRC New Directions for Digital Scholarship in Cultural Institutions is a collaboration between the endowment and the United Kingdom’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. The grant program is aimed at encouraging international collaborations, with the NEH funding U.S. collaborators while the AHRC supports collaborators located in the U.K. Grants were made to twelve collaborations and include a grant to Daniel Domingues at Rice University to develop the Digital Archive of the Atlantic Slave Trades in partnership with faculty at the University of Lancaster. The archive, which will be created from documents related to the South Sea Company, will be linked to SlaveVoyages. This digital resource on the Atlantic slave trade has been funded by the NEH in previous years.
In addition, the release included support for Humanities Initiatives at Colleges and Universities, which is only in its second year. Modeled on an ongoing program for HBCUs, tribal colleges, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, and Community Colleges, this grant program supports humanities teaching and study at higher education institutions. This grant release represents a major ramp up of the program: while only five grants were awarded in this category in 2021, 18 were awarded this year. Among these, three grants were awarded in the field of health humanities. Both Bucknell University and the University of Toledo will be creating health humanities minors. Faculty at the University of Iowa will be creating a resource to teach health narratives in English and Spanish. Many of these grants were aimed at expanding humanities access by developing humanities curricula for non-humanities students and offering resources to K-12 educators. For example, a grant to the University of Guam will support professional and curricular development for 60 university faculty and secondary school teachers on the relationship and history of the U.S. and Micronesia. A grant to Antioch University will support a second-year Clemente Course in the Humanities for low-income nontraditional students. And a grant to Auburn University will support a summer bridge program and first-year writing curriculum for students in Alabama correctional facilities.
The grant release additionally included support for faculty research at higher education institutions; digital humanities projects and publication; digital projects for the public; humanities initiatives at access-oriented institutions; preservation education and research; and infrastructure and capacity building challenge grants. Grants were made to 44 states, as well as the District of Columbia and Guam.
Posted on: January 25, 2022