Environmental Monitoring Program for Museum and Library Collections

Recipient: Borst, Lindsay (Washington, DC 20008 USA) in affiliation with Society of The Cincinnati (Washington, DC 20008-2810 USA)

Goal: Funding supports environmental monitoring in Anderson House, a National Historic Landmark that houses fine and decorative arts, historical artifacts, printed materials, and manuscripts focusing on the history of the American Revolution and the Society of the Cincinnati. Founded in May of 1783, the society was the first patriotic organization to memorialize the ideals of the new nation.

Description: The Society of the Cincinnati seeks a Preservation Assistance Grant to support the purchase and installation of twenty-one dataloggers to record temperature and relative humidity in its museum and library collections storage and exhibition spaces. This project is crucial to improving preservation efforts and ensuring the long-term preservation of its important cultural collections, which document the history of the American Revolution, the Society, and Anderson House. This monitoring program will allow staff to better understand the environments in which collection items are stored and exhibited, identify risks that improper temperature or humidity levels may present, and develop a plan for effective management of existing mechanical systems. The project will begin in January 2010 and end in February 2011, after which staff will review one year of environmental data, make adjustments, and continue monitoring.

Grant: 199683 / PG-50939-10,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Preservation Assistance Grants,   Year Awarded: 2010

Textile Conservation Assessment and Rehousing Project

Recipient: Bennett, Susan (Lexington, MA 02420 USA) in affiliation with Lexington Historical Society (Lexington, MA 02173 USA)

Goal: Hiring a consultant to conduct a preservation assessment and provide on-site training for staff on housing textiles. Preservation supplies will also be purchased. The collection includes quilts, coverlets, bedhangings, military uniforms, flags, samplers, and accessories dating from 1760. Displayed in three historic house museums, these items appear in special exhibits related to the history of Lexington and the American Revolution and are studied by scholars interested in period textiles.

Description: The Lexington Historical Society wishes to engage a textile conservation expert to outline a plan for the rehousing of the Society's textile collection, recommend the purchase of supplies, train volunteers, and supervise the rehousing effort. The expert will assess the Society's textile collection and establish a plan for conservation, in consultation with Society staff and Collections Committee. The Society's textile collection includes items from the Colonial period that help to furnish the organization's three historic house museums that played a role in the early days of the American Revolution, as well as material from all of Lexington's history to the present time that can be used in thematic exhibitions on local history topics. The proposed project would begin in January 2010 and be completed in August, 2010.

Grant: 199709 / PG-50965-10,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Preservation Assistance Grants,   Year Awarded: 2010

A Condition Survey of the Museum's Artifact Collection

Recipient: Clarke, Jerrie (Haines, AK 99827-0269 USA) in affiliation with Sheldon Museum and Cultural Center, Inc. (Haines, AK 99827 USA)

Goal: Funding supports a general preservation assessment and the purchase of preservation supplies and environmental monitoring equipment for this local history museum. The collection consists of 2,515 historical artifacts, 885 pieces of art, more than 6,000 photographs, 1,677 bound volumes, and 1,296 archival items dealing with the history of the Chilkat Valley and the town of Haines, Alaska.

Description: Four dataloggers and accompanying shuttle software to record and analyze the recorded temperature and humidity and a Nilfisk museum compatible GM 80 vacuum with variable speed control in order to more easily and safely clean the exhibits and perhaps artifacts, and materials (i.e. museum board to make boxes, batting, twill tape, etc.) to make pallets and supports that will make the artifacts safer in storage will be purchased. Alaska State Museum's Curator of Museum Services will make a site visit to oversee the initial stages of a thorough item specific condition survey of the artifact collection, make sure staff and volunteers understand the condition reporting process, look at those artifacts previously identified as needing special attention, explain how to handle artifacts during exhibit cleaning, help identify needed improvements to storage, and lead a workshop on making pallets and supports for fragile artifacts. He will also answer Staff's questions about the dataloggers.

Grant: 199721 / PG-50977-10,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Preservation Assistance Grants,   Year Awarded: 2010

Condition Assessment of Archival Collection and Onsite Preservation Workshop

Recipient: Weber, Carolyn S (Deadwiid, SD 57732 USA) in affiliation with Adams Museum and House, Inc. (Deadwood, SD 57732 USA)

Goal: A preservation assessment of over-sized photographs, maps, and architectural drawings along with an in-house workshop on the care and handling of archival materials. Collections include local mining company records, the papers of an influential area business attorney, and pictorial sources on the history of South Dakota's Black Hills region.

Description: The grant will support an on-site consultation with a paper conservator who will examine specific historic photographs, maps and drawings from the archive collections of the Adams Museum & House (AM&H). The documents selected for examination have been stored rolled-up and house in environmentally unstable conditions for years. The consultation will consist of a general assessment of the condition of the documents, including recommendations on safely accessing, storing and digitizing the materials (both analog and digital). The conservator will conduct a workshop for up to 15 people (including AM&H staff) where she will demonstrate appropriate preservation and conservation practices for museum, library and archive professionals who normally do not have ready access to a paper conservator.

Grant: 199589 / PG-50845-10,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Preservation Assistance Grants,   Year Awarded: 2010

Conservation for Collections in Stearns County

Recipient: Meline, Ann Elizabeth (St.Cloud, MN 56301-3752 USA) in affiliation with Stearns History Museum (St. Cloud, MN 56301 USA)

Goal: Hiring a preservation consultant to assess local history and ethnographic collections held by six formally affiliated museums in Stearns County, Minnesota, that include the Stearns Historical Museum; historical societies in the towns of Centre, Melrose, Kimball, St. Joseph, and Paynesville; and the unaffiliated Sinclair Lewis Foundation in Sauk Center. Collectively, these hold more than 23,250 household, agricultural, and recreational artifacts documenting the immigrant experience; 405 Dakota and Ojibwe ethnographic items; 500,000 images; 1,000 linear feet of documents; 900 books; 1,800 audiotapes; and 17,000 family histories.

Description: The National Endowment for the Humanities Preservation Assistance Grant For Smaller Institutions will support a collections project with two components. The first component is an examination of clothing, quilts, glassware, shoes, and beadwork of the Stearns History Museum's (SHM) and five affiliated museums in Stearns County. Stearns History Museum has a formal affiliate relationship with historical societies in the Stearns County towns of Sauk Centre, Melrose, Kimball, St. Joseph, and Paynesville. Also included is the Sinclair Lewis Foundation in Sauk Centre.

Grant: 199738 / PG-50994-10,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Preservation Assistance Grants,   Year Awarded: 2010

NEH on the Road: Heroes of the Sky

Recipient: Boyd, Heidi Michele (Rawlins, WY 82301 USA) in affiliation with Carbon County Museum Foundation Inc.

Goal: Ancillary public humanities programs to accompany the NEH on the Road: Heroes of the Sky traveling exhibition.

Description: Carbon COunty played a significant role during the transcontinental air race of 1919. Rawlins, the Carbon County seat, was chosen as one of the stopping points for the airplanes and one of the planes was lost after slamming into the County's Elk Mountain. Shortly after the transcontinental air race, airmail became commonplace in many parts of Wyoming, including Rawlins. The museum will do a handout that outlines the early history of aviation in Carbon County. The visitors will learn how the national movement played out at a local (county) level.

Grant: 201079 / MR-50071-10,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: NEH on the Road,   Year Awarded: 2010

Lancaster County Campus of History

Recipient: Ryan, Thomas Robert (Lancaster, PA 17603 USA) in affiliation with Lancaster County Historical Society

Goal: Endowment for a Research Assistant and Curatorial Intern as well as research fellowships, and annual programming for the new Campus of History

Description: The Lancaster County Campus of History is a humanities-centered joint project of the Lancaster County Historical Society and the James Buchanan Foundation for the Preservation of Wheatland. NEH challenge funds will create an endowment to support a new roster of research fellowships, key humanities staff, engaging public programming, and facilities maintenance of a new 26,000-square-foot addition to the historical society that will accommodate new research facilities, archival, library, and collections storage areas, exhibition galleries, learning centers, and a multi-use auditorium. Our principle objectives are to enhance and expand humanities-based programming to better explore foundational themes of American history by demonstrating the relationship between local, regional, and national stories, events, and people; and to create a new paradigm for local historical organizations as centers for critical historical reflection on America's past.

Grant: 191885 / CZ-50206-09,   Division: Challenge Grants,   Program: Special Initiatives,   Year Awarded: 2009

Lost Treasure Hunt

Recipient: Davis, Matthew Gary (Palos Verdes Peninsula, CA 90275-2247 USA) in affiliation with San Francisco Film Society (San Francisco , CA 94129 USA)

Goal: Production of a 30-minute pilot television program, "Christopher Columbus: The Mystery of the Santa Maria," and an accompanying interactive website. This would be the first program of a 13-part series entitled "The Lost Treasure Hunt."

Description: "Lost Treasure Hunt" is an educational television project that will explore topics in history and the humanities by using a unique combination of live-action documentary and animation. Bringing together nationally-recognized scholars and educators with an experienced animation creative team, the "Lost Treasure Hunt" pilot episode and website will introduce children to historical subjects and explore multicultural topics in a style that is relevant to a young audience confronted with many media choices."

Grant: 197104 / TR-50076-09,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: America's Media Makers Production,   Year Awarded: 2009

Stevens and Smith Historic Site

Recipient: Smedick, Timothy A (Lancaster, PA 17603 USA) in affiliation with Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County

Goal: Restoration and construction of the Thaddeus Stevens and Lydia Hamilton Smith Historic Sites as well as endowment for the position of Education Director.

Description: The Honorable Thaddeus Stevens (1792-1868) demonstrated an unyielding commitment to freedom and equal opportunity for Americans. He is considered the father of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which, respectively, ended slavery, extended equal protection under the law to all citizens, and granted all male citizens the right to vote. He was also a vital advocate of the Free School Act in Pennsylvania, which guaranteed a free public education to all citizens of the Commonwealth long before public school education was commonplace in the United States. As part of the current renaissance occurring in the City of Lancaster, properties once owned by Stevens and his free black housekeeper/business manager/confidante, Lydia Hamilton Smith, will be fully restored and adaptively re-used to create an interpretative and educational center that will address themes central to their legacy, including the Underground Railroad Movement.

Grant: 191878 / CZ-50199-09,   Division: Challenge Grants,   Program: Special Initiatives,   Year Awarded: 2009

Oregon Digital Newspaper Project

Recipient: Estlund, Karen (Eugene, OR 97403-1299 USA) in affiliation with University of Oregon, Eugene (Eugene, OR 97403 USA)

Goal: The digitization of 100,000 pages of Oregon newspapers, dating from 1860 to 1922, as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).

Description: The Oregon Digital Newspaper Program proposes to be a participant in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). Under this proposal requests funds to digitize 100,000 pages of historic Oregon newspaper content for inclusion in NDNP. The digitized newspapers will be full text searchable and available online as part of the Library of Congress' Chronicling America web site. Oregon's early newspapers chronicle significant events in Oregon, our country, and the world. Researchers of early race relations, feminism, labor movements, and literature can find a vast amount of primary resources within the pages of historic Oregon newspapers. This online resource is invaluable for scholars, educators and enthusiasts in history and the humanities. In addition to the online collection, preservation quality copies of the newspapers on microfilm and preservation quality tiffs will be deposited in the Library of Congress to ensure the knowledge of our past is available for generations to come.

Grant: 196363 / PJ-50052-09,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: National Digital Newspaper Program,   Year Awarded: 2009

Jane Addams and the Hull-House Settlement: Redefining Democracy

Recipient: Lee, Lisa Yun (Chicago, IL 60607-7017 USA) in affiliation with University of Illinois at Chicago (Chicago, IL 60607 USA)

Goal: Implementation of a new core exhibition at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum to incorporate new scholarship about Hull-House, Jane Addams, and the settlement house movement, and to create opportunities for civic reflection and dialogue.

Description: Jane Addams Hull-House Museum at the University of Illinois-Chicago requests $400,000 to support the project, "Jane Addams and the Hull-House Settlement: Redefining Democracy." The project will implement findings from an NEH Planning Grant to redesign the Museum???s core exhibition in order to engage, educate and inspire diverse and intergenerational audiences. The new exhibit will draw on the most recent humanities scholarship about Jane Addams and other important Progressive Period reformers and create opportunities for civic reflection and dialogue. The total project budget is $787,000.

Grant: 194739 / BR-50065-09,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: Interpreting America's Historic Places Implementation,   Year Awarded: 2009

Strengthening the Endowment of Augustana College's Center for Western Studies

Recipient: Thompson, Harry F (Sioux Falls, SD 57197 USA) in affiliation with Augustana College, Sioux Falls

Goal: To Support: augmentation of the college's endowment for the support of the Center for Western Studies

Description: Augustana College, a Christian liberal arts institution affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in North America seeks a challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to strengthen the Center for Western Studies' endowment. The Center is a department of the College with the mission of preserving and interpreting the history and cultures of the Northern Plains. As an archives, museum, academic publisher, and provider of educational programming and internships for the students and the campus, as well as the region, Augustana is seeking a $300,000 challenge grant matched by the College on a four-to-one basis for a total endowment campaign of $1,500,000. A successful campaign will increase the Center's endowment and provide dollars to support, enhance, and expand the Center's main program areas which include the Archives and Library Program, the Dakota Conference on Northern Plains, Educational Exhibits, the Publications Program, and the Building Fund.

Grant: 193757 / CH-50657-09,   Division: Challenge Grants,   Program: Challenge Grants,   Year Awarded: 2009

Cultural Hybridities: Christians, Muslims and Jews and the Medieval Mediterranean

Recipient: Catlos, Brian A (Santa Cruz, CA 95064 USA) in affiliation with University of California, Santa Cruz

Goal: A four-week college and university faculty institute in Barcelona for twenty-five participants to examine the role that Mediterranean-based interactions of Christians, Jews, and Muslims played in the emergence of the pre-modern West.

Description: The University of California, Santa Cruz proposes a 4-week inter-disciplinary Summer Institute for 24 college and university faculty to examine the medieval Mediterranean (c. 1100--1500) and its role in the emergence of the modern West. This is a sequel to our 2008 NEH Institute. Building on the infrastructure and collaborative relationships we established, we have revised our program in view of feedback from our 2008 participants. The Institute will focus on the Mediterranean as a zone where Christians, Muslims, and Jews came into contact, in peace as well as in war. This interaction made the Mediterranean region a forum for intellectual and cultural innovation and exchange, the dissemination of which was key in the emergence of the modern West. Our goal is once again to bring together a diverse group of scholars whose research and teaching would, as in 2008, benefit from and contribute to a reformulated understanding of the Mediterrean's role in the development of modernity.

Grant: 197425 / EH-50203-09,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Institutes for College and University Teachers,   Year Awarded: 2009

Contested Homelands: Unpacking the Knowledge, History and Culture of Historic Santa Fe, New Mexico

Recipient: Sanchez, Rebecca Maria (Albuquerque, NM 87131-1231 USA) in affiliation with University of New Mexico (Albuquerque, NM 87131 USA)

Goal: Two one-week workshops for eighty schoolteachers on the history of interactions between Native Americans and European settlers in Santa Fe.

Description: The University of New Mexico, in conjunction with the New Mexico Office of the State Historian is seeking a grant award to provide teacher workshops during the summer of 2010. In the summer of 2010 Santa Fe, New Mexico will be celebrating its 400th anniversary (based on European settlement). This celebration is a timely opportunity for teachers from around the country to study the complex history and culture of the area by investigating the historic sites of Santa Fe and surrounding Pueblos. The workshops will be structured around the concept of homelands and include the study of historic sites, artifacts and stories in historic Santa Fe, New Mexico and surrounding communities. Specifically, the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro and the Palace of the Governors will be interpreted,studied and contrasted with the Pueblo history of the region to understand the complexity of historical homelands.

Grant: 197495 / BH-50311-09,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Landmarks of American History,   Year Awarded: 2009

Postdoctoral Fellowships

Recipient: Hoffman, Ronald (Williambsburg, VA 23187-8795 USA) in affiliation with Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture (Williamsburg, VA 23187-8781 USA)

Goal: The equivalent of one fellowship per year for three years.

Description: The Omohundro Institute seeks to renew, through the Endowment's Fellowship Programs at Independent Research Institutions, funds for two-year postdoctoral fellowships for the 2010-2013 grant period. The proposal requests support for three fellows who will conduct research in areas of early American studies with the goal of preparing manuscripts for book publication. They will be NEH fellows in successive twelve-month terms in 2011, 2012, and 2013. The Institute's sixty-three-year-old fellowship program has a well-deserved reputation for quality and productivity and is held in high regard by the historical profession. As a dedicated research center and a publisher of important work about the early American period, the Omohundro Institute provides an ideal setting for scholars working on their first book-length publications.

Grant: 194586 / RA-50076-09,   Division: Research Programs,   Program: Fellowship Programs at Independent Research Institutions,   Year Awarded: 2009

Inventing America: Lowell and the Industrial Revolution - Summer 2010 Teacher Workshops

Recipient: Kirschbaum, Sheila (Lowell, MA 01852 USA) in affiliation with University of Massachusetts, Lowell (Lowell, MA 01854 USA)

Goal: Two one-week Landmarks workshops for eighty school teachers on the textile industry in Lowell, Massachusetts, as a case study of early nineteenth-century industrialization.

Description: The Tsongas Industrial History Center, a partnership of UMass Lowell's Graduate School of Education and Lowell National Historical Park, proposes to engage teachers in examining the textile industry as a case study of early 19th-century industrialization. We will use the unique resources of the Park and other cultural/historical sites to address changes in work, economics, society, and the environment between 1820 and 1860. On-line follow-up classes will examine the meaning of slavery in northern textile cities and the globalization of textiles today. Lowell, the first planned industrial city in the U.S., formed the template for later industrial cities and provides an ideal setting for historical training for teachers. Teachers experience history where it happened and learn how to teach with historic sites in their communities. The Workshop combines lectures and discussion, field investigations, primary and secondary materials, and historical fiction for students.

Grant: 197515 / BH-50331-09,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Landmarks of American History,   Year Awarded: 2009

We The People Programs in Arkansas

Recipient: Katrosh, Kris (Fayetteville, AR 72701 USA) in affiliation with Arkansas Humanities Council (Little Rock, AR 72201 USA)

Goal: Funding will support history Day in Arkansas, the African American cemetery project, and a website.

Description: The Arkansas Humanities Council proposes to allocate We The People funds to two state wide programs consistent with the purposes of the WTP initiative and the council's own core goals: the annual state wide History Day in Arkansas program conducted by the University of Central Arkansas and our own program of grants, training, and technical assistance to local groups working to preserve, document and interpret imperieled African American cemeteries around the state. The AHC also proposes to upgrade its website to allow for access to council programs, grants, technical assistance and information.

Grant: 199892 / BC-50488-09,   Division: Federal/State Partnership,   Program: Grants for State Humanities Councils,   Year Awarded: 2009

We The People: Nebraska

Recipient: Hood, Jane Renner (Lincoln, NE 68508 USA) in affiliation with Nebraska Humanities Council (Lincoln, NE 68508-1836 USA)

Goal: Funding will support three core programs: the "Bright Dreams Hard Times: America in the 1930s"-the era of the Depression and the Dust Bowl-Chautauqua productions in North Platte and Scottsbluff, "Capitol Forum" which will engage over 1,000 students in examining key issues facing the United States, and the Humanities Resource Center speakers who will present over 400 programs across the state.

Description: The Nebraska Humanities Council requests a We The People grant of $88,150 to support three projects that are core programs within the NHC's strategic plan. The "Bright Dreams Hard Times: America in the 1930s" Chautauqua will bring scholars portraying President Franklin Roosevelt, Louisiana Governor Huey Long, evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, writer Zora Neale Hurston, and humorist Will Rogers to North Platte and Scottsbluff. "Capitol Forum on America's Future" will offer over 1,000 high school students an opportunity to examine key issues facing the United States from the perspectives of the humanities. The Humanities Resource Center speakers on U.S. and Great Plains history and culture will present over 400 programs across the state affording children and adults, however remote and rural their towns may be, an opportunity to benefit from humanities scholars in their communities.

Grant: 199909 / BC-50505-09,   Division: Federal/State Partnership,   Program: Grants for State Humanities Councils,   Year Awarded: 2009

Interpreting Munroe Tavern as the "Museum of the British" in Lexington, MA

Recipient: Bennett, Susan (Lexington, MA 02420 USA) in affiliation with Lexington Historical Society (Lexington, MA 02173 USA)

Goal: Planning for a new interpretation of Munroe Tavern as the "Museum of the British" to broaden the understanding of Lexington, Massachusetts, at the beginning of the Revolutionary War.

Description: Munroe Tavern, temporary field headquarters of the British Army during the retreat from Concord to Boston on April 19, 1775, is one of three historic sites with important connections to the Battle of Lexington that are interpreted by the Lexington Historical Society. The NEH funded a consultation in 2007 that permitted the staff historian to research the British Army in America during the 1770s and its orders in April 1775, and engaged humanities scholars in identifying themes for the re-interpretation of Munroe Tavern. The Society now seeks a planning grant to develop very specific plans for the re-furnishing of the Tavern and use of outdoor space, new tour outlines and docent training, a sound room evoking the events of April 19, and a web site.

Grant: 197025 / BP-50141-09,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: Interpreting America's Historic Places Planning,   Year Awarded: 2009

What Is a Just Society?

Recipient: Jopp, Jennifer (Salem, OR 97301 USA) in affiliation with Willamette University

Goal: Development of a lower division undergraduate course addressing issues related to justice, just society, and what makes justice prevail.

Description: This course engages students in a consideration of justice and the role of justice in the construction of politics. We will ask: what is a just society? How might justice be measured? Attained? Maintained? Beginning with the REPUBLIC of Plato, the students will engage with philosophers and thinkers across many centuries who have pondered how best to construct a society that fosters justice. Touching as it does on many themes, the course will have students read works that encourage them to grapple with the related themes of the role of faith and reason in society, the possibilities for equality in human society, the nature of man, and the processes by which we might bring our ideal visions of society closer to fruition. Reading works by authors as diverse as Plato, Saint Augustine, Christine de Pizan, William Godwin, and John Rawls, students will-alone, together, and in larger forums-engage in wide-ranging discussions of the nature of the human quest for justice.

Grant: 196711 / AQ-50086-09,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Enduring Questions: Pilot Course Grants,   Year Awarded: 2009