Preserving Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens' Humanities Collections: Purchasing Environmental Monitoring Equipment

Recipient: Ferone, Jennifer (Akron, OH 44303 USA) in affiliation with Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens, Inc. (Akron, OH USA)

Goal: The purchase of equipment for monitoring environmental conditions in Stan Hywet Hall, a National Historic Landmark Tudor Revival house, which contains 95 percent of the furniture, decorative arts, household goods, photographs, and works on paper that belonged to the Seiberling family, co-founders of Goodyear Tire. Through tours of the furnished house museum, visitors learn about Akron's history in the early twentieth century.

Description: Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens is dedicated to the preservation, restoration and interpretation of the Frank A. Seiberling family legacy. Seiberling co-founded The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in 1898; Goodyear became the world's largest tire company in 1916 and Akron became a boomtown. Built between 1912 and 1915, Stan Hywet was the Seiberlings' home. Seiberling's heirs gifted the estate and its contents to the community in 1957; our collection is a trove of unique antiques, textiles and furnishings that represent the lifestyle of a successful American Gilded Age entrepreneur and his family. However, this priceless collection is at risk due to less-than-ideal storage/environmental conditions. This project addresses the critical need to purchase and install electronic dataloggers and light meters so our conservator can properly record and manage temperature, relative humidity and visible and UV light levels to preserve the collection for future generations to study and enjoy.

Grant: 189321 / PG-50324-08,   Category: Archival Management and Conservation,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Preservation Assistance Grants,   Year Awarded: 2008

Macroscale City Structure at Late Assyrian Ziyaret Tepe, Turkey (Phase II)

Recipient: Matney, Timothy (Akron, OH 44325-1910 USA) in affiliation with University of Akron, Main Campus (Akron, OH 44325 USA)

Goal: Continuing excavation, analysis, and interpretation of urban planning and settlement patterns of a site in present-day Turkey that was a provincial capital of the Late Assyrian Empire. (36 months)

Description: This proposal requests funds for three years to complete archaeological fieldwork started under NEH-RZ-50516-06. The fieldwork will take place at Ziyaret Tepe in the Diyarbakir Province of Turkey between July 15 and September 10 annually, with subsequent specialist analyses being conducted in the US and Europe after each field season. Ziyaret Tepe is a 32-hectare site on the Tigris River, and served as a regional center on the northern periphery of the Assyrian empire (c. 900-600 BC). The principal goal of the current, and proposed, NEH-funded projects is to study how the Assyrian city was structured and how it functioned in antiquity. This is what we have termed the "macroscale" study of the built environment. This work is important not only for understanding narrowly the nature of Assyrian urban life at the peripheries of the empire, but will also add significantly to our broader anthropological understanding of the structure of urban life in the earliest cities across the globe.

Grant: 186353 / RZ-50721-07,   Category: Archaeology,   Division: Research Programs,   Program: Collaborative Research,   Year Awarded: 2007

British Asia and the British Atlantic, 1500-1820: Two Worlds or One?

Recipient: Mancke, Elizabeth (Akron, OH 44325-1902 USA) in affiliation with University of Akron, Main Campus (Akron, OH 44325 USA)

Goal: A conference at the University of Sussex in Falmer, U.K. on July 11-13, 2007, looking at connections between the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds in the early modern world, and seeking to bridge the scholarly divide between British Asia and the British Atlantic in that era. (12 months)

Description: Through a conference, this project will foster conversation among 24 scholars about connections between the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds in the early modern world. The conference papers and commentaries will be revised and edited for publication as a book, which we hope will be among the first, but not the last, publications to bridge the scholarly divide between British Asia and the British Atlantic in the early modern era.

Grant: 186379 / RZ-50747-07,   Category: History,   Division: Research Programs,   Program: Collaborative Research,   Year Awarded: 2007

Preservation Needs Assessment

Recipient: Paschen, Stephen (Akron, OH 44325-1702 USA) in affiliation with University of Akron, Main Campus (Akron, OH 44325 USA)

Goal: A preservation assessment of the university's archives, including collections on the creation of Ohio's canal system, the early history of flight in America, and the history of American psychology.

Description: This project will undertake an assessment of the conditions under which the University of Akron Archival Services and the Archives of the History of American Psychology store and handle materials. These documents consist of records of the university, collections relating to local history (the American History Research Center), and materials dealing with the history of psychology in America. Project goals include: 1) an onsite assessment of the conditions of storage and handling of materials in the repositories; and 2) a written report recommending actions for mitigating preservation concerns in a general sense (not on the collection level). Both activities will be performed by Ms. Blythe Lee, a preservation consultant, who has had prior experience with NEH-funded preservation assessment studies.

Grant: 184303 / PG-50056-07,   Category: Archival Management and Conservation,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Preservation Assistance Grants,   Year Awarded: 2007

Preserving the Museum's Art Collection

Recipient: Tunstall, Arnold (Akron, OH 44308 USA) in affiliation with Akron Art Museum

Goal: The purchase and installation of storage furniture and the rehousing of modern and contemporary art collections, which encompass strong holdings of painting and sculpture since 1960, 20th-century American and international photography, American impressionist and tonalist painting, and regional art.

Description: The Akron Art Museum respectfully requests a $309,000 grant from the NEH for the Museum's Collection Project, which is aimed at ensuring access to and perservation of the collection. NEH support is specifically sought for 1) the purchase and installation of collection storage equipment and furniture; and 2) salary support for temporary staffing to help prepare and re-house the collection and to update information in the collections database. NEH funding will enable the museum, for the first time in its history, to custom design its storage facilities for these objects from the ground up with proper storage furniture to ensure safe storage conditions, maximize space efficiency, provide room for growth and facilitate greater access.

Grant: 180913 / PZ-50025-06,   Category: Archival Management and Conservation,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Stabilization Grants,   Year Awarded: 2006

Macroscale City Structure at Late Assyrian Ziyaret Tepe, Turkey

Recipient: Matney, Timothy (Akron, OH 44325-1910 USA) in affiliation with University of Akron, Main Campus (Akron, OH 44325 USA)

Goal: Continuing excavation, analysis, and interpretation of urban planning and settlement patterns of a site in modern Turkey that was a provincial capital of the Late Assyrian Empire. (12 months)

Description: This proposal seeks funds for archaeological fieldwork to be conducted at the site of Ziyaret Tepe in the Diyarbakir Province of southeastern Turkey in July-September 2006 and for subsequent specialist analyses through June 2007. Ziyaret Tepe was a provincial capital of the Late Assyrian Empire during its zenith between 900-600 BC. The proposed project explores the nature of urban planning, structure and functioning at Late Assyrian Ziyaret Tepe though a combination of geophysical subsurfacing mapping and broad-scale horizontal excavations. It is our long-term goal to map the entire settlement, providing a unique database on ancient urbanism. Ziyaret Tepe will be destroyed by the construction of the Ilisu Dam on the Tigris River scheduled to be completed by 2012. Nine seasons of work (1997-2005) have made significant progress towards the mapping of the Late Assyrian city and the proposed work fills important gaps in our existing maps. Previous NEH support was granted under RZ-50288-04.

Grant: 181264 / RZ-50516-06,   Category: Archaeology,   Division: Research Programs,   Program: Collaborative Research,   Year Awarded: 2006

Investigating a Late Assyrian Urban Landscape at Ziyaret Tepe, Turkey

Recipient: Matney, Timothy (Akron, OH 44325-1910 USA) in affiliation with University of Akron, Main Campus (Akron, OH 44325 USA)

Goal: Excavation and analysis of the site of ancient Tushhan on the Upper Tigris in southeast Turkey, an ideal laboratory for studying the process of collapse of the Late Assyrian Empire.

Description: This proposal seeks funding for two years of archaeological research at Ziyaret Tepe (ancient Tushhan) in the Diyarbakir province of southeastern Turkey. Funds requested from NEH will cover, in part, an excavation season in the summer of 2004, subsequent specialist analyses, and a study season in Turkey in 2005. Ziyaret Tepe was a provincial capital at the edge of the Assyrian empire between the early 9th and late 7th centuries BC. In 2002 and 2003, a small archive of clay cuneiform texts was uncovered in an administrative complex at Ziyaret Tepe. These tablets, exceptionally rare in Turkey, provide us with an important opportunity to utilize both in situ Assyrian historical texts and detailed archaeological records to study such topics as the nature of urbanization, socio-economic variability, the relationship between the city's Assyrian elites and commoners, settlement planning and the site's collapse. As detailed within the proposal we are particularly interested in terms of the proposed NEH project in studying how Assyrian identity in this frontier setting was defined, maintained, and changed within the household and how the neighborhood as a supra-household social and spatial unit functioned to create group identity and to facilitate interactions among social groups. By focusing on these broader issues of identity and urbanization, it is our contention that this project will generate interest widely across the humanities, as well as providing a comparative model for archaeologists working in other regions and time periods.

Grant: 170912 / RZ-50288-04,   Category: Archaeology,   Division: Research Programs,   Program: Collaborative Research,   Year Awarded: 2004

Discovery and Rediscovery: Europeans and Indians in the Americas

Recipient: Mancke, Elizabeth (Akron, OH 44325-1902 USA) in affiliation with Western Washington University (Bellingham, WA 98225 USA)

Goal: To support an adult reading program, a two-part lecture series, and a discus- sion series that will focus on cultural interactions and exchanges in the Pacific Northwest over the past five centuries.

Grant: 157240 / GP-21781-92,   Category: Interdisciplinary,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: Special Projects,   Year Awarded: 1992

Women in the History of the Russian Empire

Recipient: Clements, Barbara E (Akron, OH 44325-0000 USA) in affiliation with University of Akron, Main Campus (Akron, OH 44325 USA)

Goal: To support an international conference designed to further research on the roles of women in Russian history from the medieval period to the 1930s.

Grant: 161468 / RX-20965-88,   Category: History,   Division: Research Programs,   Program: Conferences,   Year Awarded: 1988

Challenge Grant

Recipient: Smith, Jeffrey E (Akron, OH 44320 USA) in affiliation with Summit County Historical Society

Goal: To augment the operating endowment of the historical society which operates twohistoric properties--the Stone Mansion and the Brown House.

Grant: 141318 / CH-20042-84,   Category: Humanities,   Division: Challenge Grants,   Program: Challenge Grants,   Year Awarded: 1984

A Translation, with Critical Introduction and Notes, of Bede's 'Homilies on the Gospels'

Recipient: Martin, Lawrence T (Akron, OH 44325 USA) in affiliation with University of Akron, Main Campus

Goal: To support a translation with critical introduction and notes of all (50) of the "Homilies on the Gospels" by the Venerable Bede (eighth century), which have been used by the Western Church for eleven hundred years.

Grant: 137815 / RL-20598-84,   Category: History of Religion,   Division: Research Programs,   Program: Translations,   Year Awarded: 1984

Muybridge, Marey, and their Influence on late 19th and 20th Century Art

Recipient: Coplans, John (Akron, OH 44308 USA) in affiliation with Akron Art Institute

Goal: To plan an exhibition comparing the works of photographers Muybridge and Marey and their interrelationship with the philosophical and cultural climate of the time.

Grant: 133216 / GM-*0212-79,   Category: Humanities,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: Museums and Historical Organizations, Humanities Projects in,   Year Awarded: 1979