State Humanities Program

Recipient: Ellison, William L (Louisville, KY 40205 USA) in affiliation with Kentucky Humanities Council (Lexington, KY 40508 USA)

Grant: 199966 / SO-50363-10,   Category: Humanities,   Division: Federal/State Partnership,   Program: State Programs (SO),   Year Awarded: 2010

Safeguarding the Appalshop Films Collection

Recipient: Rubens, Caroline (Whitesburg, KY 41858 USA) in affiliation with Appalshop, Inc.

Goal: The purchase of 1,080 archival film cans and a freezer to rehouse at-risk documentary 16mm films and videos created since 1969. A consultant would advise on archival rehousing and the purchase of the freezer. The selection of supplies and equipment is based on recommendations from the consultant and on the results of a previous NEH Preservation Assistance Grant and other preservation assessments. Appalshop's film holdings document a wide range of events and activities involving the history and culture of Appalachia, including local life, politics, religious services, folk artists at work, and traditional music.

Description: For 40 years, Appalshop has been producing documentary films and videos, audio programs, musical recordings and other forms of media. In the process it has developed an extensive and important collection of materials documenting the Appalachian region and rural America. The Appalshop Film Collection contains approximately 1.8 million feet of 16mm black and white and color film covering all aspects of life in central Appalachia, including coal mining, subsistence farming, craftspeople, labor strikes, musicians, storytellers, religious practices, out-migration, politics, environmental activism, and Appalachian literature. In order to ensure the long term safety of its film holdings, the Appalshop Archive is seeking a grant to retain the services of a film archiving consultant and purchase supplies to re-house a portion of its 16mm picture and sound elements.

Grant: 199816 / PG-51072-10,   Category: Archival Management and Conservation,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Preservation Assistance Grants,   Year Awarded: 2010

Frazier International History Museum General Preservation Assessment

Recipient: Burnside, Madeleine H (Louisville, KY 40202 USA) in affiliation with Owsley Brown Frazier Historical Arms Museum Foundation, Inc.

Goal: Hiring a consultant to conduct a general preservation assessment of the collections of the Frazier International History Museum. They include weapons, firearms, leather accoutrements, textiles, paintings, historic photographs, and archival materials. Among the best-known items are hilted swords from the American Revolution and the War of 1812, a presentation rifle belonging to George Washington, General George Custer's Navy Colt revolvers, Native American textiles, and a Daniel Boone family Bible. Items from the collection are used in the classroom, in teacher training workshops, and in public programs.

Description: The Preservation Assistance Grant requested by the Frazier International History Museum will fund a general assessment of the museum's collections. This grant will provide the Frazier Museum with the funding necessary to contract with a conservation consultant to assess the historical collections of the museum. The goal of this project is to provide Frazier Museum staff with an overall plan for the conservation of our collection. In addition, the assessment will establish institutional priorities by identifying objects at the highest level of risk, recommending forms of treatment as required, and providing guidance for ongoing conservation review.

Grant: 199798 / PG-51054-10,   Category: Archival Management and Conservation,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Preservation Assistance Grants,   Year Awarded: 2010

The American Maritime People

Recipient: Roorda, Eric P (Louisville, KY 40205-0671 USA) in affiliation with Mystic Seaport Museum (Mystic, CT 06355 USA)

Goal: A six-week college and university teacher institute for twenty participants on American maritime history from the colonial era to the present.

Description: The Munson Institute of American Maritime Studies at Mystic Seaport requests $166,094 to underwrite a six-week institute for college/university teachers, "The American Maritime People," in summer 2010. The Institute builds on the Museum's successful record of two previous NEH institutes. The American people, as a population descended largely from ocean-going immigrants, have strong historical connections to the sea; the U.S. citizenry continues to be deeply dependent on these maritime activities. Through seminars led by ten visiting scholars and co-directors, Roorda and Gordinier, "The American Maritime People" will employ interdisciplinary perspectives on American maritime studies, with an emphasis on recent social, cultural and ecological approaches and current research. Participants will enhance their course offerings through studies, dialog and reflection on the influence of maritime activities on U.S. history and culture.

Grant: 197433 / EH-50211-09,   Category: American History,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Institutes for College and University Teachers,   Year Awarded: 2009

Prime Time Family Reading, Chautauqua in Schools

Recipient: Carter, Virginia G (Lexington, KY 40508 USA) in affiliation with Kentucky Humanities Council

Goal: Funding will support Prime Time Family Reading Time and Chautauqua living history presentations in schools.

Description: The Kentucky Humanities Council requests $48,000 for Prime Time Family Reading Time,a library-based reading and discussion of humanities themes for at-risk youth and their parents. Prime Time removes obstacles to families living in poverty and to immigrants who have no opportunities to interact in a positive environment that encourages community participation,educational opportunities, and civic engagement. The proposed Prime Time programs are especially relevant to the theme of "Created Equal." We also propose to use $62,750 to support Chautauqua (dramatic first-person history presentations) in the schools, including paying a part time consultant to represent the Council and help reach under-served areas. Kentucky's funding for education faces even greater challenges during this economic recession. Schools can not afford to bus children to cultural venues. Chautauqua in the schools is delivered to the schools and provides teachers with much-needed teaching materials.

Grant: 199889 / BC-50485-09,   Category: Humanities,   Division: Federal/State Partnership,   Program: Grants for State Humanities Councils,   Year Awarded: 2009

Do we need God for the good life?

Recipient: Austin, Michael Warren (Richmond, KY 40475 USA) in affiliation with Eastern Kentucky University

Goal: The development of an undergraduate course that addresses issues relating to the good life, including God's existence or non-existence, human nature, human fulfillment, and moral growth.

Description: The enduring question to be addressed in this course is "Do we need God for the good life?" By examining this question from a variety of perspectives, students in this course will not only appreciate the pluralism that exists with respect to the possible answers to this question, but they will also see how a variety of disciplines relate to it. The readings and discussion in class will draw from texts in philosophy, religion, biology, history, and literature.

Grant: 196643 / AQ-50018-09,   Category: Humanities,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Enduring Questions: Pilot Course Grants,   Year Awarded: 2009

Camden-Carroll Library Special Collections and Archives Preservation

Recipient: Baker, Donna J (Morehead, KY 40351 USA) in affiliation with Morehead State University

Goal: A general preservation assessment of 3,200 linear feet of archival and library special collections, including books, archives, photographs, broadsides, maps, journals, and audiovisual records documenting Southern Appalachian culture, the natural environment, craft, music, folklore and history.

Description: This project will conduct a general preservation needs assessment of the Camden-Carroll Library's Special Collections and Archives area. Results from this assessment will be used to create a strategy for preservation practices and initiatives.

Grant: 193835 / PG-50471-09,   Category: Archival Management and Conservation,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Preservation Assistance Grants,   Year Awarded: 2009

Conservation Assessment of the Allen R. Hite Art Institute

Recipient: Begley, John (Louisville, KY 40292 USA) in affiliation with University of Louisville Research Foundation

Goal: The hiring of a consultant to survey storage and exhibition space and make recommendations for care of the art collection, which comprises 2,094 prints, 298 drawings, 435 paintings, and 128 works in other media. Its particular strengths are in local and regional art, but the collection also documents the history of printmaking from Durer to the present. The budget also requests support for the purchase of a datalogger to record current temperature and humidity ranges.

Description: The Allen R. Hite Art Institue, the Department of Fine Arts of the University of Louisville, will hire conservator, Shelley Paine of Nashville, TN, to conduct and initial conservation survey of the Institute's extensive art collections, the spaces in which they are exhibited, and the spaces in which the collections are stored as a beginning point for development of a thorough conservation plan and program.

Grant: 193927 / PG-50563-09,   Category: Archival Management and Conservation,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Preservation Assistance Grants,   Year Awarded: 2009

Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War - A Traveling Exhibition to Libraries

Recipient: Atkins, Cynthia (Hopkinsville, KY 42240 USA) in affiliation with Hopkinsville Community College

Description: The purpose of this grant proposal is to provide funding for the Lincoln traveling exhibition. This exhibition will add to the cultural outreach of the college and will provide outreach opportunities to all constituencies, especially youth in the community who might not otherwise have the opportunity to experience this type exhibition. Hopkinsville is located in an area rich in Civil War history. This exhibition will help provide context to those who experience it. Hopkinsville is statistically the most diverse city in Kentucky with a population that includes over 33% African Americans. It is also strategically located near Fort Campbell, KY. This exhibition will attract significant participation from groups in the area.

Grant: 197222 / LL-50002-09,   Category: American History,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: Small Grants to Libraries: Lincoln, Constitution and Civil W,   Year Awarded: 2009

Portland Museum: Protecting our Humanities CollectionsThrough Environmental Control

Recipient: Andrews, Nathalie Taft (Louisville, KY 40212 USA) in affiliation with Portland Museum (Louisville, KY 40212-1036 USA)

Goal: The improvement of environmental conditions to preserve collections of historical objects, costumes, paintings, drawings, photographs, books, documents, and oral histories that document the history of Portland, Kentucky.

Description: The Portland Museum, a community-focused museum in Louisville, Kentucky, requests NEH funds to install a professionally engineered climate control system in Beech Grove, an historic home that houses the museum and its collections. More than 5,000 objects and records that play an important role in educating and revitalizing this urban community of need will be stabilized.

Grant: 190663 / PZ-50165-08,   Category: Archival Management and Conservation,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Stabilization Grants,   Year Awarded: 2008

The Role of Slavery in the Rise of New England Commerce, Industry, and Culture to 1860

Recipient: Melish, Joanne (Lexington, KY 40506-0027 USA) in affiliation with Rhode Island Historical Society (Providence, RI 02906 USA)

Goal: A two-week institute for thirty school teachers on economic development, slavery, and antislavery in New England during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Description: The proposed institute will lead teachers to understand the critical role of slavery in two phases of New England's pre-Civil-War development: a) its rise as a maritime power from roughly 1700 to 1800 through its dominance of both the American slave trade and the provisioning trade to the West Indies, using its own slave labor to raise agricultural products that were in turn exported to the Caribbean slave societies; and b) its antebellum rise as an industrial power, through the development of its cotton and woolen textile industry (processing slave grown cotton and producing cotton and wool "slave cloth" for the Southern market) and its machine tool industry (producing shovels, axes, etc. specifically marketed to Southern slave owners as implements to be used by their slaves).

Grant: 192000 / ES-50238-08,   Category: American History,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Institutes for School Teachers,   Year Awarded: 2008

Prime Time Family Reading, Chautauqua, Lincoln, Picturing America

Recipient: Carter, Virginia G (Lexington, KY 40508 USA) in affiliation with Kentucky Humanities Council

Goal: humanities programming for at-risk youth and their families through the Prime Time reading and discussion program in at least 15 public libraries. Book series will mirror the We the People bookshelf theme, Created Equal, and will increase its offerings in Spanish. Chautauqua presentations in the schools will include commemoration of the Lincoln Bicentennial.

Description: Kentucky Humanities Council requests $48,000 for Prime Time Family Reading Time which is based on discussion of humanities themes; $42,750 for Chautauqua development and School programs; $15,000 for Lincoln Bicentennial programs; and $5,000 Picturing America.

Grant: 192461 / BC-50436-08,   Category: Interdisciplinary,   Division: Federal/State Partnership,   Program: Grants for State Humanities Councils,   Year Awarded: 2008

Carolingian Canon Law Project: A Collaborative Initiative

Recipient: Firey, Abigail (Lexington, KY 40506-0027 USA) in affiliation with University of Kentucky Research Foundation (Lexington, KY 40506 USA)

Goal: The establishment of encoding standards and digital access for multiple versions of medieval Latin legal manuscripts, including bibliographic information, annotations, and English translations.

Description: The Carolingian Canon Law Project (CCL) gives access for the first time to a vast quantity of important medieval legal material, hitherto known only partially, and only by scholars who have been able to consult manuscripts in repositories scattered across Europe, or who have used texts published before the twentieth century. This project initiates digital presentation that matches the dynamic nature of the material, which varies in each manuscript. It will also establish basic "industry standards" for encoding transcriptions of medieval legal manuscripts. This project thus will offer a model for any venture in the Humanities that involves study of multiple versions of a text. The CCL also supplies vital bibliography, annotations, and translations into English of these Latin texts. This project is intensively collaborative, and is designed to sustain collaboration among future as well as present scholars. Level II funding is requested from September 2008 through August 2009.

Grant: 192220 / HD-50429-08,   Category: Medieval Studies,   Division: Digital Humanities,   Program: Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants,   Year Awarded: 2008

Pride and Passion: The African American Baseball Experience - A Traveling Exhibition to Libraries

Recipient: Oberhausen, Debra (Louisville, KY 40206 USA) in affiliation with Louisville Free Public Library Foundation (Louisville, KY 40203-2257 USA)

Description: The 1,000-square-foot panel exhibition examines baseball as a reflection of race relations in the United States, asking how baseball has shaped, and been shaped by, national identity and culture. Photographs, broadsides, team rosters,scorecards, and other baseball memorabilia would tell the story of black participation in baseball, from the integrated amateur leagues of the nineteenth century and the creation of the segregated Negro Leagues in the Jim Crow era to Jackie Robinson's now-famous breaking of the color barrier in 1947.

Grant: 192343 / LT-50009-08,   Category: American History,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: Small Grants to Libraries: Pride and Passion,   Year Awarded: 2008

State Humanities Program

Recipient: Ellison, William L (Louisville, KY 40205 USA) in affiliation with Kentucky Humanities Council (Lexington, KY 40508 USA)

Grant: 184533 / SO-50194-07,   Category: Humanities,   Division: Federal/State Partnership,   Program: State Programs (SO),   Year Awarded: 2007

Prime Time Family Reading,Chautauqua, magazine

Recipient: Carter, Virginia G (Lexington, KY 40508 USA) in affiliation with Kentucky Humanities Council

Goal: To support the Prime Time Family Reading Time family literacy program, Chautauqua presentations in Kentucky's schools, and a special fall 2008 edition of Kentucky Humanities magazine on Abraham Lincoln in observance of the Lincoln Bicentennial.

Description: Kentucky Humanities Council requests $47,700 for Prime Time Family Reading Time which is based on discussion of humanities themes; $30,000 to support Chautauqua in schools and project coordinator; and $18,000 for partial costs of a special Abraham Lincoln edition of Kentucky Humanities magazine.

Grant: 189171 / BC-50370-07,   Category: Interdisciplinary,   Division: Federal/State Partnership,   Program: Grants for State Humanities Councils,   Year Awarded: 2007

Russian Folk Religious Imagination

Recipient: Rouhier-Willoughby, Jeanmarie (Lexington, KY 40506-0027 USA) in affiliation with University of Kentucky Research Foundation (Lexington, KY 40506 USA)

Goal: A robust web-based multimedia resource combining folk legends on saints and biblical figures, songs and religious rituals, and iconography of Russian Orthodoxy.

Description: Russian Orthodoxy has been the source of a great deal of speculation about the extent of duoeverie (dual faith). Since the fall of the Soviet Union, scholars have undertaken the study of folk religion in earnest, but there is as yet no comprehensive study of the interrelations between various folk genres. Typically folklorists study either oral literature (e.g., legends and songs), or folk ritual and iconography. This separation of genres inhibits a full understanding of the complexity of the complete religious belief system. Our multimedia critical edition will feature an innovative cross-disciplinary approach combining the study of legends on saints and biblical figures, songs and religious rituals, and folk iconography into a single, comprehensive research project that will be published in a new digital framework designed to integrate text and multimedia into a coherent whole.

Grant: 186613 / HD-50038-07,   Category: Folklore/Folklife,   Division: Digital Humanities,   Program: Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants,   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,   Program: Humanities Initiatives for Faculty: HBCUs,   Year Awarded: 2007

Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country: A Traveling Exhibition for Libraries

Recipient: Herrmann, Carrie Anne (Union, KY 41091 USA) in affiliation with Boone County Public Library (Union, KY 41005 USA)

Grant: 186995 / LS-50094-07,   Category: American Literature,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: Small Grants to Libraries: John Adams Unbound,   Year Awarded: 2007

Cataloging and Selective Reformatting of the Appalshop Audio and Moving Image Archives

Recipient: Barret, Elizabeth (Whitesburg, KY 41858 USA) in affiliation with Appalshop, Inc.

Goal: Cataloging archival records that document the content of the organization's multi-media collections, creating finding aids, and rehousing and the selective reformatting of audio and moving image collections.

Description: To preserve, catalog, and improve access to the documentary records in its archive, Appalshop seeks support for an archivist to assess and arrange the Archive's moving image and recorded sound collections; identify, preserve, and generate access copies of at-risk collection materials; further describe and complete cataloguing records of the Archive's materials and create title-level finding aids; provide increased awareness and access to the collections by the public through development of the Archive's website, and inclusion of catalogue records in established on-line archive collection indexes.

Grant: 179473 / PA-51948-06,   Category: Media-General,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Preservation/Access Projects,   Year Awarded: 2006