NEH on the Road: Asian Games

Recipient: O'Brien, Nancy (Del Rio, TX 78840 USA) in affiliation with Del Rio Council for the Arts

Goal: Ancillary public humanities programs to accompany the NEH on the Road: Asian Games traveling exhibition.

Description: To expose the Del Rio community to the arts of the Asian cultures through the visual arts, lectures, workshops and classes

Grant: 201076 / MR-50068-10,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: NEH on the Road,   Year Awarded: 2010

China Biographical Database Project

Recipient: Bol, Peter (Cambridge, MA 02138 USA) in affiliation with Harvard University

Goal: Expansion of a Chinese biographical database of prominent political and cultural figures since ancient times. To expedite the incorporation of biographical data, the project would combine human editing with automated programs for extracting information from relevant sources.

Description: Biography has been a major form of the recording of the past in China since the second century B.C. Over half of the content of the twenty-five official histories--the histories of the dynasties that ruled China--consists of biography. The interest in biography as a way of thinking about and remembering the Chinese past is represented most systematically in modern research by biographical dictionaries in English, Chinese, and Japanese and the many personal name indexes to historical sources. The China Biographical Database provides a means of analyzing the life histories of tens or ten-thousands of figures who appear in the Chinese historical record without losing sight of the main characteristics of the individual life history. This project will combine automated programs for marking up Chinese biographical texts with human editing, thus enabling dramatic increases in the expansion of this bilingual database.

Grant: 194531 / PW-50438-09,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Humanities Collections and Reference Resources,   Year Awarded: 2009

The Silk Roads: Early Globalization and Chinese Cultural Identity

Recipient: Hershock, Peter D (Honolulu, HI 96848 USA) in affiliation with East-West Center

Goal: A five-week college and university faculty institute for twenty-five participants to explore the rich history of the Silk Road.

Description: Funding is sought for a 5-week summer institute on "The Silk Roads: Early Globalization and Chinese Cultural Identities." This program will be hosted by the Asian Studies Development Program, a Federal/State collaborative project of the East-West Center and the University of Hawaii. Through the proposed institute, 25 non-specialist, undergraduate educators will be introduced to the rich history and imaginaire of the Silk Roads to examine how global interconnectedness shapes and is shaped by culture, focusing on the complex relationships through which Chinese cultures came to be among the world's most resilient and diverse.

Grant: 197417 / EH-50195-09,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Institutes for College and University Teachers,   Year Awarded: 2009

NEH On the Road: Asian Games

Recipient: Jonason, Maureen Kelly (Moorhead, MN 56560 USA) in affiliation with Heritage Hjemkomst Interpretive Center (Moorhead, MN USA)

Description: Programming associated with NEH On the Road Asian Games

Grant: 196823 / MR-50050-09,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: NEH on the Road,   Year Awarded: 2009

Children of Hangzhou: Connecting with China

Recipient: Swartz, Leslie (Boston, MA 02210 USA) in affiliation with Boston Children's Museum

Goal: Implementation of an interactive, trilingual traveling exhibition for children exploring contemporary Chinese culture.

Description: BCM requests $400,000 from the NEH to support the implementation of Children in Hangzhou: Connecting with China, a 2500 square foot interactive exhibition for children 5-12, adults, and teachers travels to 9 children's museums in the US and Canada, and includes programs; Learn about China: China Summer in Boston 2008; and cultural exchanges with China. Program goals are to: expand knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of contemporary China; to dispel stereotypes and "demystify" China; to encourage children and adults to want to learn more. With a distinguished advisory board and staff expertise on China, BCM is in a unique position to engage a large audience of children, families, and educators in the US and Canada in meaningful and throught-provoking experiences deeply rooted humanities themes on China. BCM has conducted programs on China for nearly 30 years, has two China specialists on staff, and has experience presenting meaningful cultural exhibitions for children and adults.

Grant: 186789 / MI-50090-08,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: Museums Implementation,   Year Awarded: 2008

Cataloging, Preserving, and Digitizing Chinese Rare Books

Recipient: Inman, Michael R (New York, NY 10018 USA) in affiliation with New York Public Library

Goal: Cataloging of 1,500 volumes of Chinese rare books of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, with conservation treatment and digitization of 93 volumes.

Description: The New York Public Library requests $345,800 in funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities to completely catalog and partially preserve and digitize materials in the Chinese Rare Book Collection. This two-year project will make accessible a collection of materials that will provide a large community of scholars with important primary sources relating to Chinese modern history, translation, Confucian theory through time, as well as Buddhist and Christian beliefs, the Chinese classics, and Chinese art, among other topics. The materials that will undergo preservation and digitization are those deemed to be most historically and artifactually significant titles in the collection. The project will catalog 1,000 Chinese rare books, totaling 1,500 volumes and will preserve and digitize 6 titles, totaling 93 volumes and 8,700 spreads.

Grant: 189835 / PW-50133-08,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Humanities Collections and Reference Resources,   Year Awarded: 2008

From Chang'an to Xi'an: Ancient Capital to Modern Metropolis

Recipient: Hsu, Hsin-Mei Agnes (New York, NY 10065-7088 USA) in affiliation with China Institute in America, Inc. (New York, NY 10021 USA)

Goal: A five-week summer institute in Xi'an, China, for twenty-five school teachers on China's formative history in the Wei River valley of southern Shaanxi Province.

Description: From Chang'an to Xi'an: Ancient Capital to Modern Metropolis is a five week summer institute held in Xi'an China for teachers. This institute will provide participants a unique opportunity to understand the multi-layered history of one of the world's greatest urban areas. The program will be structured with background lectures and site explorations to help participants develop group curriculum projects that will aid in bringing this significant city into the classroom. The program's curriculum will focus on China's history from the unification of the country in 221 BCE to the fall of the Tang dynasty in 907 - time periods addressed by the National Standards for History which is the basis for curricula in many school districts across the country.

Grant: 192025 / ES-50263-08,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Institutes for School Teachers,   Year Awarded: 2008

Rediscovering Afghanistan, Crossroad of Cultures: A Web-Based Teaching Guide

Recipient: Cole, Elizabeth Anne (New York, NY 10021 USA) in affiliation with Asia Society

Goal: A website on Afghanistan's history, human geography, culture, and art that would include digitized images and primary sources, as well as teaching materials.

Description: "Rediscovering Afghanistan, Crossroad of Cultures" is a 2-year, materials development project intended primarily for high school and college teachers and, secondarily, their students. The project will create digitized primary resources presented in a humanities context to introduce Afghanistnan's history, society and culture, and provide a lens with which to analyze how they have shaped contemporary Afghanistan. The final product will be a web-based teaching guide in the form of a multimedia website. Materials available on the site for teachers will include background essays in both text and audio-visual formats, lesson plans and a bibliography, supported by richly annotated primary textual, visual and musical resources. The site will focus on Afghanistan's history, human geography, culture and art, but sidebars throughout will draw links to current events. Primary materials will be drawn from collections at Williams College, the Sakata Music Collection and Asia Society's own archives.

Grant: 190029 / EE-50543-08,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Teaching and Learning Resources and Curriculum Development,   Year Awarded: 2008

The State Attack on Entitlement and the Origins of China's Great Leap Forward Famine

Recipient: Thaxton, Ralph A (Waltham, MA 02454 USA) in affiliation with Brandeis University (Waltham, MA 02254 USA)

Goal: Research to culminate in the writing of a co-authored book examining the famine in rural Anhui province that resulted from Mao's Great Leap Forward. (36 months)

Description: This is a study of catastrophic events in China for the 1945 to 2005 period, particularly of how the Communist Party-led state in China has engineered an attack on the fundamental entitlements of the peasant household, including the entitlement to private land ownership. This study that provides a two-dimensional, micro- and macro-level picture of the origins of this milieu and its relationship to the formation of the revolutionary socialist order and to the embedded modality of socialist rule that periodically and episodically has revived it in China under Mao and afterward.

Grant: 191529 / RZ-50948-08,   Division: Research Programs,   Program: Collaborative Research,   Year Awarded: 2008

Stepping East: Asian Studies at Calvin College

Recipient: Bays, Daniel H (Grand Rapids, MI 49546 USA) in affiliation with Calvin College (Grand Rapids, MI 49506 USA)

Goal: Endowment for an Asian Studies program, including faculty development, visiting scholars, a lectureship, course releases for faculty program administrators, acquisitions, and office staffing.

Description: A $2 million endowment, to be raised in the context of a major capital campaign, will allow Calvin College to sustain and expand a quality Asian studies program that is designed to ensure consistent contributions to the study and appreciation of the humanities, student understanding of the importance of the history, philosophy, religion, languages, and literature of a major contributor to global culture, and faculty research and scholarship on key humanities themes in the Asian world. It will build on key accomplishments over the past eight years that have not only strengthened a major humanities program but also created tremendous momentum in curricular development, faculty scholarships, and exchange programs with China, Japan, and Korea.

Grant: 181307 / CH-50332-07,   Division: Challenge Grants,   Program: Challenge Grants,   Year Awarded: 2007

American Research in the Humanities in China (ARHC)

Recipient: Tymowski, Andzrej W (New York, NY 10017-6795 USA) in affiliation with American Council of Learned Societies (New York, NY 10017 USA)

Goal: Three fellowships a year for three years.

Description: This proposal seeks funding from the NEH for the period July 1, 2007 through June 30, 2011 to support the ACLS fellowship program, American Research in Humanities in China (ARHC). We have successfully administered this program since 1995, providing scholars with access to archives and other collections in China, and nurturing collegiality among U.S. scholars and their Chinese counterparts.The ARHC deepens American understanding of China. No other program focuses exclusively on humanities research in China. No other organization could do it as well as ACLS, because of the combination of our record of achievement in China studies, our expertise in designing and administering national fellowship competitions, and finally, because of the competence of our representative office in Beijing in helping U.S. scholars navigate the practical difficulties and bureaucratic obstacles of working in China.

Grant: 184877 / RA-50047-07,   Division: Research Programs,   Program: Fellowship Programs at Independent Research Institutions,   Year Awarded: 2007

Literatures, Religions, and Arts of the Himalayan Region

Recipient: Lewis, Todd (Worcester, MA 01610 USA) in affiliation with College of the Holy Cross

Goal: A four-week summer institute for thirty school teachers on the peoples and traditions of the Himalayan region.

Description: The Institute will focus on the cultural traditions of the Himalayan region and particularly on the polities, fine arts, and religions that have been important in Asian history. Hinduism and Buddhism will be featured, as well as the B?n tradition and shamanism. There will be special emphasis on art and literature, drawing on new scholarship, museum collections, and translations of novels by two Nepali authors whose work has been acclaimed in Asia and the West. The Institute will end with presentations on ecological and political crises facing the Himalayan peoples. Curriculum workshops will be integrated with scholarly presentations, identifying available K-12 classroom resources, but also including films, foods, and music. Institute teachers will be trained to create web sites and publish their own curriculum implementation plans. As in our three previous programs, the Institute web site will also post materials from expert presentations to become a resource for educators nationwide.

Grant: 187117 / ES-50211-07,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Institutes for School Teachers,   Year Awarded: 2007

Public Programming to Accompany Traveling Exhibition

Recipient: English, Susan P (Joliet, IL 60432 USA) in affiliation with Joliet Area Historical Museum

Description: Funding will be used to enhance the public programming planned for the Asian Games exhibit which wll be on view at the Joliet Area Historical Museum from September 1-October 8, 2007.

Grant: 189486 / MR-50006-07,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: NEH on the Road,   Year Awarded: 2007

Cataloging the Tibetan Buddhist Canon

Recipient: Germano, David F (Charlottesville, VA 22904 USA) in affiliation with University of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA 22903 USA)

Goal: Cataloging and describing over 5,250 titles in the Tibetan Buddhist Canon (the "Kangyur" and "Tengyur") with comparative data on multiple editions, searching tools, and links to digital editions, images of the artifacts, translations, and bibliographic sources.

Grant: 179641 / PA-52116-06,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Preservation/Access Projects,   Year Awarded: 2006

Creating the South Asia Union Catalogue, Phase II

Recipient: Nye, James H (Chicago, IL 60637 USA) in affiliation with University of Chicago

Goal: The South Asian Union Catalogue, describing19th- and 20th-century books and periodical publications; this phase will focus on materials published in eastern South Asia (eastern India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and colonial Burma) and will list the locations where these materials are held throughout the world.

Grant: 179615 / PA-52090-06,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Preservation/Access Projects,   Year Awarded: 2006

Living and Being 'Chinese': Geographic and Ethnic Diversity in China

Recipient: Jervis, Nancy (New York, NY 10065 USA) in affiliation with China Institute in America, Inc. (New York, NY 10021 USA)

Goal: A four-week summer institute for thirty elementary and secondary school teachers to explore ethnic and geographic diversity in China using "the home" as a rubric for examining varieties of everyday life through disciplines such as art, architecture, history, and anthropology.

Description: The proposed 4-week NEH Summer Institute Living and Being 'Chinese": Geographic and Ethnic Diversity in China will use the concept of "the home" to investigate the issues of geographic and ethnic diversity in China throughout history and in contemporary times. Living and Being 'Chinese' will guide 30 participants through the doorsof a multitude of Chinese dwellings and communities- examining houses, families and patterns of life in multifarious geographic and ethnic contexts-to reveal the complexity of "living and being Chinese". By looking at the diverse regional and ethnic articulations of what it means to be 'Chinese', participants will learn to appreciate the heterogeneity of the world's most populous country.

Grant: 182197 / ES-50164-06,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Institutes for School Teachers,   Year Awarded: 2006

The Ideal and the Real: Arcs of Change in Chinese Culture

Recipient: Hershock, Peter D (Honolulu, HI 96848 USA) in affiliation with East-West Center

Goal: A five-week institute in Hawai'i for twenty-five college and university teachers on the historical dynamics of cultural change in China.

Description: The Ideal and the Real: Arcs of Change in Chinese Culture is being proposed as a five-week summer institute to be held in Hawai`i under the auspices of the Asian Studies Development Program (ASDP), a national collaborative project jointly sponsored by the East-West Center and the University of Hawai`i. Through the proposed institute, 25 non-specialist, undergraduate educators will examine the historical interplay among religious, philosophical, social, political and artistic ideals and realities as a means of understanding the historical dynamics of cultural change in China and continuing through the country’s stunning re-emergence as a global leader.

Grant: 182130 / EH-50104-06,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Institutes for College and University Teachers,   Year Awarded: 2006

Morikami: Exploring the Continuing Dialogue Between Japanese and American Cultures

Recipient: Gregersen, Thomas (Delray Beach, FL 33446 USA) in affiliation with Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens

Goal: Endowment for the position of Director of Education and for humanities programming.

Description: The Morikami Museum & Japanese Gardens seeks a $500,000 Challenge Grant from NEH to match $1.5 million, over a three-year period, in non-federal gifts to endow The Morikami's humanities programs. This grant proposal is an essential component of a $10 million endowment campaign to improve the depth of humanities programs about Japanese society and American/Japanese cultural influences. NEH funds will be used to: 1) conduct research on the Japanese heritage of Florida and the relationships and influences on each other of Japanese and American cultures; 2) translate this research into new exhibitions and educational programs; 3) expand participation of humanities scholars in museum programs, despite the shortage of such scholars in Florida; 4) institutionalize the offering of interpretive publications and lectures to accompany exhibitions; 5) expand museum exhibitions and programming to include contemporary issues not previously addressed; 6) ensure the continuity and quality of humanities programs by creating an endowment to fund the Director of Education position in perpetuity. As the only museum in the U.S. that consistently and exclusively provides a humanities approach to the study and interpretation of Japanese culture and the Japanese-American heritage, The Morikami is poised to become an even more important contributor to the national community of museums producing new exhibitions and knowledge on these subjects, and making this information widely available through the Virtual Japanese Museum Project and the Resource Center on Japanese Culture for Florida Educators.

Grant: 172294 / CH-50176-05,   Division: Challenge Grants,   Program: Challenge Grants,   Year Awarded: 2005

Treasures of the Liao (907-1125): China's Forgotten Nomad Dynasty

Recipient: Proser, Adriana (New York, NY 10021 USA) in affiliation with Asia Society

Goal: Implementation of a traveling exhibition, catalog, symposium, and related programs concerning the Liao, a nomad dynasty ruling much of China from 907 to 1125 C.E.

Grant: 176453 / GM-50465-05,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: Museums and Historical Organizations, Humanities Projects in,   Year Awarded: 2005

Cultures and Religions of the Himalayan Region

Recipient: Lewis, Todd (Worcester, MA 01610 USA) in affiliation with College of the Holy Cross

Goal: A four-week institute for thirty school teachers to study the cultures and religions of the Himalayan region in the context of Asian and world history.

Grant: 176884 / ES-50124-05,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Institutes for School Teachers,   Year Awarded: 2005