NEH Announces $39.3 Million for 245 Humanities Projects

The National Endowment for the Humanities has announced $39.3 million in grants for 245 humanities projects across the country. This round of funding, NEH’s third and last for fiscal year 2017, will support research, education, and public programs in the humanities. These peer-reviewed grants were awarded in addition to $46.1 million in annual operating support provided to the national network of state and local humanities councils during fiscal year 2017. Projects funded by the grants include a partnership with First Nations Development Institute to revitalize Native American languages through creation of language-immersion programs; a collaboration with Blue Star Families to expand its “Books on Bases” literacy program for military families; a statewide series of community reading and discussion events in Indiana focused on the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; and a traveling exhibition on whaling in 19th-century popular culture and literature organized around a restored 1,275-foot panoramic 1848 painting of a whaling voyage. NEH’s Public Scholar awards, which support popular books in the humanities, will support a history of modern Syria from the 19th century to the present, a new biography of American poet Sylvia Plath, and a book on the Blackwell sisters, 19th-century doctors who founded a women’s medical college.