Waterways to Freedom: The Underground Railroad in Virginia

Recipient: Newby-Alexander, Cassandra L (Norfolk, VA 23504-8060 USA) in affiliation with Norfolk State University (Norfolk, VA 23504 USA)

Goal: A project to create a historical simulation of the Underground Railroad in Virginia by using interactive gaming technology to educate high school and college students.

Description: Waterways to Freedom: the Underground Railroad in Virginia, will create a digital simulation with historical content and interactive educational features. We are calling this approach Empathetic Simulation Competition Accessing Past Experiences (ESCAPE). Abolitionism was just as important in the South as it was in the North, albeit as an underground movement. For port areas, such as Hampton Roads, Virginia that lay on the east coast's most important waterways, the story about how individuals and networks of people organized this resistance continues to captivate the public's imagination. However, common myths circulating about the activities of the Underground Railroad distract from the realities of the stories, in part because these myths are dramatic and elicit empathy. By approaching this material using ESCAPE, we hope to combine realism and dramatic simulation to our educational objectives by infusing historically possible dialogue, motivations, and actions.

Grant: 196872 / AB-50053-09,   Category: Afro-American Studies,   Division: Education Programs,   Year Awarded: 2009

Collaboration for Digital Access for Margaret Walker Archives

Recipient: Luckett, Robert (Jackson, MS 39217 USA) in affiliation with Jackson State University

Goal: A project to digitize and provide intellectual context for the papers of African-American writer Margaret Walker Alexander (1915-1998), which are housed in the university's Sampson Library.

Description: The Jackson State University Alexander Research Center (the Center) and the H. T. Sampson Library (the Library) request a two-year $100,000 grant to implement training acquired during Ford Foundation workshops on digitizing the Walker archives for greater access by students, researchers, and teachers. It is the largest single archive of a twentieth-century African American woman writer, Margaret Walker (Alexander) [1915-1998]. The Center has a 110- linear-foot Walker literary archives and the Library has a 22-linear-foot Walker administrative archives. Walker was an award-winning poet, novelist, and influential educator. NEH funding will help digitize 40 percent of the Walker archives and use CONTENTdm to store and manage them. Three humanities scholars and two high school teachers will annotate the archives and write a ten-page essay, a five-page curriculum guide, and a print and online brochure to supplement class room instruction in secondary and post secondary education.

Grant: 196908 / AB-50061-09,   Category: Afro-American Studies,   Division: Education Programs,   Year Awarded: 2009

Local History in a Global Context: Petersburg's African American History in the Context of the Atlantic World

Recipient: Proenza-Coles, Christina (Petersburg, VA 23806 USA) in affiliation with Virginia State University (Petersburg, VA 23803 USA)

Goal: To Support: A one-year project to create a research center, a website, and a graduate history curriculum on the history of Petersburg, Virginia's African American community.

Description: To establish a national center of study for "Petersburg and the Atlantic World" that focuses on Petersburg's African American History as a principal theme. The goal of the program is to provide original pedagogical and research opportunities to strengthen Petersburg's educational institutions and establish a center of study and historica preservation that will help to revitalize the area.

Grant: 189579 / AB-50037-08,   Category: History,   Division: Education Programs,   Year Awarded: 2008

Enhancing the Comprehension, Appreciation and Teaching of Western Literature: from Homer to Shakespeare at HBCUs

Recipient: Wilson, Hugh F (Grambling, LA 71245 USA) in affiliation with Grambling State University

Goal: A month-long summer program of study of Homer, Dante, Marie de France, Christine de Pizan, and Shakespeare for six to eight faculty members at Grambling and participants selected from neighboring Historically Black College and Universities.

Description: Our month-long program is designed to enhance the comprehension, appreciation and teaching of world literature by exposing teachers from historically black colleges and universities like Grambling State University, Southern University at Baton Rouge, and Xavier University to nationally recognized scholars from elitte institutions like UC-Berkeley, Dartmouth, Barnard, Rice, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Kentucky at Lexington, and the University of Chicago. Major scholars from major institutions have agreed to lead sessions on important figures from the western canon: Homer, Dante, Christine de Pizan, and Shakespeare.

Grant: 184623 / AB-50029-07,   Category: Humanities,   Division: Education Programs,   Year Awarded: 2007

Reeling Them In: Invigorating the Humanities Through Film At Two Texas Historically Black Colleges

Recipient: Palmer, James M (Prairie View, TX 77446-0156 USA) in affiliation with Prairie View A & M University (Prairie View, TX 77445 USA)

Goal: A collaboration between Prairie View A & M University and Texas Southern University to prepare faculty at both institutions to develop and teach courses on the history and the critical interpretation of film.

Description: Recognizing the social, aesthetic, and economic importance of cinema for the history of the twentieth century, Prairie View A&M and Texas Southern Universities seek an NEH grant to help develop and enhance courses that address history, literature, and culture through film. We will collaborate to create new film courses and establish resources for these courses. An NEH grant is sought because training and funding (as Andrew Garrison, director of the NCTE Commission on Media, has noted) rank as the two biggest hurdles to incorporating film and television successfully into the classroom. Creating a collaborative workshop, in consultation with experts in the field, would be one way to help improve the quality and teaching in the humanities, while a yearlong faculty forum on film is another.

Grant: 184613 / AB-50019-07,   Category: Film History and Criticism,   Division: Education Programs,   Year Awarded: 2007

Richard Wright: A Mississippi Writer

Recipient: Zheng, Jianqing (Itta Bena, MS 38941-1400 USA) in affiliation with Mississippi Valley State University (Itta Bena, MS 38941 USA)

Goal: A project on Richard Wright and his works, to include workshops and the development of teaching materials, for faculty and school teachers from the Mississippi Delta.

Description: Funds from this project will be used to enhance MVSU faculty and area school teachers' knowledge of Richard Wrights literary works. The focus will encompass his fiction, non-fiction and little-known haiku. The program areas targeted by this proposal include: 1) to fund visiting scholars to review the university's humanities programs; and 2) to build ties between institutuions of higher learning and secondary schools. Our participants will be faculty and English teachers from the local school districts in the Delta.

Grant: 184614 / AB-50020-07,   Category: American Studies,   Division: Education Programs,   Year Awarded: 2007

FREEDOM, ECONOMICS AND RELIGION: Race and African American Experience in the Atlantic World: The Case of Petersburg, VA

Recipient: Philipsen, Dirk Peter (Petersburg, VA 23806 USA) in affiliation with Virginia State University (Petersburg, VA 23803 USA)

Goal: Four workshops on the history of Petersburg, aimed at developing a model for teaching local history in a global context.

Description: VIrginia State University proposes a collaborative effort between University faculty and staff, community leaders in the City of Petersburg, the Governor's School and outside scholars to develop a program on Race and the African American History in the Context of the Atlantic World - Case Study Petersburg, VA. Our goal is to create a field of specialization for the VSU Graduate Program in History. Significant resources, instructional materials and pedagogical approaches will also be made available to regional k-12 schools and scholars worldwide through a newly created website. Petersburg represents an illuminating case study showing, in an international context, the development of race relations and the African American experience in the U.S.

Grant: 184618 / AB-50024-07,   Category: History and Philosophy of Science, Technology, and Medicine,   Division: Education Programs,   Year Awarded: 2007

Reinvigorating Humanities Teaching and Learning through a Comparative Approach to World Literature

Recipient: Weick, George P (Frankfort, KY 40601 USA) in affiliation with Kentucky State University

Goal: A program to enhance the comparative study of classic works of Western civilization along with selected non-Western and African American works for ten faculty members engaged in revising the core curriculum.

Description: The project seeks to reinvigorate humanities teaching and learning at Kentucky State University by engaging a group of humanities faculty in reading and relating "paired texts" from selected "classic" texts in the Western tradition to African and African-American literature under the guidance of Dr. Thee Smith of Emory University who has developed a field-theory approach to comparative study of works from different cultures. Faculty participating in the project are also members of a curriculum review and revision committee for KSU's Integrative Studies Program (IGS), thus the project's outcomes have direct bearing on changes to the IGS curriculum, which consists of a sequence of four three-semester-credit-hour courses required of virtually all baccalaureate-degree seeking students at KSU. The primary project goal is to improve faculty teaching and to enhance student learning. After-project dissemination plans would extend the impact of the project to other insitutions.

Grant: 184612 / AB-50018-07,   Category: Interdisciplinary,   Division: Education Programs,   Year Awarded: 2007

Advancing Humanities and Genetics Teaching and Scholarship at HBCUs

Recipient: Dunston, Georgia M (Washington, DC 20060 USA) in affiliation with Howard University (Washington, DC 20059 USA)

Goal: A collaboration between the GenEthics Center of the National Humane Genome Center at Howard University and the Tuskegee University National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care to enhance the links between genetics and humanities at HBCUs.

Description: We propose to advance teaching and scholarship in humanities and genetics by creating a pioneering, multidisciplinary, interuniversity collaboration between the GenEthics Unit of the NHGC and the Tuskegee Bioethics Center. The goals of the collaboration are to: 1) Develop Howard and Tuskegee faculty in the integration of humanities and genetics; 2) Incorporate humanities and genetics themes into relevant courses at Howard and Tuskegee; 3) Produce the curriculum for a humanities and genetics summer course for HBCU faculty; and 4) Plan and execute the inaugural offering of the HBCU faculty humanities and genetics course.

Grant: 179861 / AB-50009-06,   Category: Interdisciplinary,   Division: Education Programs,   Year Awarded: 2006

The Diaspora in segregated Louisiana: an archival and oral history research initiative

Recipient: Donaldson, Gary A (New Orleans, LA 70119 USA) in affiliation with Xavier University of Louisiana (New Orleans, LA 70125 USA)

Goal: A project to involve faculty and students in the recovery of the cultural heritage of the African diaspora in Louisiana by locating and preserving transcripts of original interviews produced in the Federal Writers' Project and by incorporating additional interviews and other relevant resources.

Description: The History Department at Xavier University of Louisiana proposes to create a national repository of materials capturing the life experiences of African Americans in segregated south Louisiana between 1890 and 1964. The project will build on research faculty and students have conducted during the last three years. We will: train students in research methods, develop new upper division courses and collect print materials from the Louisiana Federal Writers Project. The project will enrich the teaching experiences of faculty in a variety of courses and offer new opportunities for professional development for all faculty members at Xavier University.

Grant: 179853 / AB-50016-06,   Category: American History,   Division: Education Programs,   Year Awarded: 2006