Funded Projects Query Form
5095 matches (showing first 5000)

The installation of new energy-efficient HVAC, fire detection, and water drainage systems to help protect the collections of furniture, paintings, decorative items, and archaeological materials contained in the George Read II House, a historic landmark and museum.

This project addresses the implementation of environmental improvements for the Delaware Historical Society’s collections of the nationally significant George Read II House Museum, situated in the Old New Castle (DE) National Historic Landmark District. The on-site Read House collections provide opportunities for wide-ranging humanities-based research and scholarship, interpretive programs for all ages, and undergraduate and graduate training. The application requests support for carefully planned improvements at the George Read II House Museum to improve preventive conservation measures, to improve the environmental conditions for collections, and to improve safety and security of collections with both non-mechanical measures and energy-efficient mechanical systems upgrades. Preventive measures that anticipate changing climate and storm intensities will reduce the threat of future episodic moisture intrusion.

A book on American philanthropy and founding father Benjamin Franklin, who bequeathed large sums to Boston and Philadelphia with the stipulation that they be paid in two installments only after compound interest had accrued for one hundred and then two hundred years. The book also addresses the implications of Franklin's legacy for contemporary charitable giving.

Before he died, Benjamin Franklin placed a bet on America. His will's final codicil ordered the deposit of funds to be cashed out, with the accrual of compound interest, by the cities of Boston and Philadelphia 100, then 200, years later - should they still stand. Franklin's wager, a response to a dare by a French writer urging him to show his citizens how to apply Poor Richard's example for posterity, did - remarkably - pay out, funding civic projects and vocational training. Leaving money to beautify cities and fund vocational training - usually credited to the likes of Carnegie and Rockefeller - was yet another of Franklin's inventions, and one all but forgotten today. This book will explain how Franklin was the Founding Father of American philanthropy (he also invented the matching grant), and how his example of small, targeted giving can inform the national conversation as the Baby Boom generation prepares to give away $30 trillion, the largest transfer of wealth in U.S. history.

A new treatment of what historians often call  "the Progressive Era," this book shows how the meaning of American nation-building underwent a profound shift in the years 1896 to 1929--from knitting together geographic regions to knitting together diverse peoples and cultures--just as the U.S. was emerging as a world power, international economic leader, and reservoir of displaced persons from around the globe.

A reinterpretation of the early twentieth century US, the study explores the transformation of American nationhood between 1896 and 1929 -- the era in which the United States emerged as a world power, international economic leader, and reservoir for displaced persons from across the globe. Most studies of the period have focused on the so-called Progressive Era. They overlook the larger processes of national integration and transformation that the Progressives, their rivals and their successors negotiated. At the same time, the book addresses enduring questions about nation-building: both as a process -- how can people build functioning nation-states out of diverse regions and peoples -- and as a matter of concept: what are the constituents of a nation? How do people understand nationhood and how have those conceptions changed over time? The US in this period offers a telling case because nation-building shifted from knitting together regions to integrating diverse peoples and cultures.

A history of the connections between religion and the petroleum industry in the U.S., from the “King of Crude” Patillo Higgins in the 1890s to the Rockefeller and Pew families in the energy crisis of the 1970s to the current era of globalization.

This project examines the subtle but critical relationship between petroleum and religion in the twentieth century, with focus on the United States, its oil-patch regions, and their change over time, but also on the expansion of American oil-patch interests and influences abroad. Blending cultural, political, and economic history, it details and assesses how those living in oil-rich zones have always considered petroleum their special providence, a fragile gift bestowed by God to be used industriously for the advance of “His Kingdom.” Driven by sacred notions of production, stewardship, and dominion over the earth, they have long found a natural ally in the petroleum business, which has grafted these ideals onto an ideology of high-risk, high-reward wildcat entrepreneurialism. This marriage has spawned structures of power with sweeping impact, domestically and globally, and transformed American religion, politics, and culture in profound and lasting ways.

A book-length study of Sufi music in Tunisia, examining its proliferation among both Sufis and non-Sufis.

In Tunisia, musics involving praise songs to Sufi saints are not exclusive to members of Sufi orders. Rather, a number of distinct healing and devotional musical traditions co-exist, each associated with particular social and devotional communities. In this project, I show how four such traditions, those of women, Tunisians of sub-Saharan descent, the Jewish community, and even hard-drinking laborers, contribute to a larger ecology of Tunisian Sufi music that also includes a variety of Sufi rituals as well as staged concerts. “Ambient Sufism” draws attention to the connections among these different musics and emphasizes their public audibility, which is now at risk in the new socio-religious climate of post-revolutionary Tunisia. Based on fieldwork between 2009 and 2015, this book highlights the voices of participants and analyzes their musical practices to account for the under-acknowledged role of music and pleasure, as well as the importance of minorities, in Islamic practice.

A preservation assessment and purchase of shelving to house a recently acquired collection of African art that includes beaded jewelry and ceramic vessels, and which complements a larger collection of some 900 objects from across the African continent. The new collection, including 17 large ceramic vessels, documents a variety of forms, pot-making techniques, and surface embellishments and includes objects of the Yoruba, Dogon, and Lobi peoples of West Africa, and the Masai and Kamba peoples of Kenya.  The collections are used for research, teaching, and public programming.

The Gregory Allicar Museum of Art at Colorado State University requests a grant for the purchase of a Spacesaver storage carriage, and additional shelves to maximize the use of existing carriages, in order to house recent gifts of African art objects and make more efficient use of existing units. Recent gifts include 40 objects in various media and 17 large ceramic vessels. These additions enhance the eminence of the museum’s African collections by expanding existing categories, broadening artistic representation, and providing CSU with one of the few top quality collections of African ceramics in the country. The original Spacesaver system, installed in 2008, was selected with conservators Eileen Clancy and Judy Greenfield. Greenfield consulted on the preparations for this proposal and the grant will also support her two-day conservation assessment.

A preservation assessment of the collections at the Gibbs Avenue Museum and Archives, part of the Bridgton Historical Society. The purpose of the society is to trace the evolution of Bridgton, Maine, from its 1768 incorporation as a farming community, through expansion as a railroad- and canal-supported industrial town, to its present tourist-focused character. Its collections constitute 180 linear feet of archival materials, which include 45 cubic feet of oversized material and over 10,000 photographic images. Highlights include late 18th-century range maps, military regimental records, and patterns used by the Bridgton Machine Company, which invented the Perry Turbine. The proposed preservation assessment would update a 1998 Conservation Assessment Program report and focus on optimizing storage capacity and prioritizing conservation treatment needs.

The project will bring conservator Ronald Harvey to the Bridgton Historical Society to assess the preservation needs of the collections at the Gibbs Avenue Museum and Archives, and produce a report that will outline steps to take to insure the future well-being of the collection.  The collection includes photographs, personal, business, and town records and other documents, as well as transportation vehicles, household artifacts, agricultural and manufacturing tools and equipment, fine arts, textiles, military artifacts, and other items used or produced in Bridgton or by Bridgton residents. It tells the story of the town's social, religious, political, industrial and commercial growth from its agrarian roots in the 1760s, through its heyday as a busy commercial and industrial center, to its growing popularity as a tourist destination, the rise and decline of the narrow gauge railroad, and the economic and demographic transformations of the 20th and early 21st centuries.

A book-length study of extra-factual information in international politics.

When uncertainty is high, and verifiable facts are inconvenient or few, how do individuals learn about what to fear and how to respond to the threats they have identified? This book focuses on the key role played by threat narratives. I argue that across time and space some distinct and oft replicated patterns have emerged, whereby invented, embellished or simply unverified sources of security-related information materially, despite being unproven, inform and influence foreign and defense policy discourse and formulation. Marrying insights from cognitive, behavioral and political science, I hypothesize that by exploiting individuals’ cognitive, psychological and biological predispositions, enterprising actors can transform vague and inchoate objective sources of anxiety into proximate, and even existentially menacing, albeit unverifiable, security threats. To test my theory, I employ a combination of survey data and cross-national historical case studies, from the 19th-21st centuries.

The completion of a book-length survey of the archaeology of the prehistoric Iberian peninsula.

For my NEH project I will complete a book entitled Archaeology of the Iberian Peninsula: From the Paleolithic through the Bronze Age (currently under contract with Cambridge University Press, scheduled for completion in July 2018). The book will document the rich and diverse histories of the peoples who lived on the Peninsula between 1,000,000 and 3000 years ago (the Bronze Age), through their art, burials, tools, and monuments. Despite recent dramatic discoveries at archaeological sites in Portugal and Spain, which have revolutionized our thinking about human history, the rich archaeological heritage of prehistoric Iberia remains largely unknown outside the Peninsula. My book will be the only up-to-date synthesis of Iberian archaeology, in English, accessible to students, scholars, and the interested public.

Research for and writing of a study of a community of ultra-Orthodox Jews who use the Internet anonymously to critique their religious community and share their doubts.

How do nonliberal religious communities morally struggle with doubt and faith in the digital age? The book project analyzes the lives of ultra-Orthodox Jews living “double lives,” those who doubted the truth of divine revelation at Mount Sinai but made the moral choice to live in their communities as practicing Jews. The Internet made it possible for those living double lives to anonymously critique their communities online (in Yiddish and English) and secretly explore secular knowledge, sensibilities, and sociality offline. In response, ultra-Orthodox Jewish communal leaders called the current period “a crisis of faith.” There has been a community-wide acknowledgement that embodied signs no longer assured the cultivation of shared interior faith; this required new forms of attention to interiority through talk. As a study of a struggle by doubters and the faithful to define authentic ultra-Orthodoxy, the book speaks to humanities scholars of religion, ethics, language and media.

A book about patient activism at a U.S.-managed leper colony in the Phillipines (1905-1930s).

This project will advance our understanding of Filipino leprosy patients’ engagement with American colonial officials; this is an understudied theme in the literature on empire and public health policy and U.S. occupation of the Philippines. In 1905, American health authorities established a leper colony in Culion, an isolated island in Palawan. Suspected lepers were forcibly removed from their homes and relocated to Culion. Most scholarship on Culion highlights its role as a laboratory for civic experimentation and how it was embroiled in major political issues of the day. In this project, I consider the views and practices of leprosy patients to show their resistance, as well as adaptation and accommodation of certain regulations in order to improve their lives on the island. This project also addresses such issues as the criminalization of disease and the degree to which individual rights may be compromised in the name of public health, all of which have contemporary resonance.

A general preservation assessment, conservation assessment of selected items, and a preservation workshop related to the museum’s collection of 800 pieces of clothing and accessories from the 1890s through the 1970s.  They include designer items as well as fashions representing social, economic, and cultural changes during this period. Some items of note include costumes, uniforms, and formal dress worn by students at the university and a collection of flapper dresses and accessories.

The University of Central Oklahoma is requesting $6,000 for a general preservation assessment of the Fashion Museum Collection on campus, as well as for education and training of preservation techniques by a textile conservator. This collection is the only collection of designer clothing available in the state on a college campus available for research and study. It contains over 800 pieces of designer and/or representative clothing from the 1890s through the 1970s, and over 300 hats, 100 shoes, and miscellaneous accessories.  All items were collected by and/or donated by prominent women in Oklahoma. The textile conservator will be contracted to: 1) perform a collections survey, 2) develop detailed plans for improving storage, 3) assess the conservation treatment of selected items in the collection, 4) provide a one day workshop on preservation techniques, and 5) serve as a mentor for an advanced student or recent graduate from UCO's Museum Studies program on this project.

A preservation assessment and the development of disaster preparedness plans for the university’s archives and special collections, comprising 3,300 linear feet of historical records, manuscript collections, and rare books.  The collection includes personal papers, business records, maps, oral histories, and photographs documenting the economic and cultural history of rural southeastern Missouri and the broader Mississippi Valley region, primarily during the 19th and 20th centuries. Among the rare books are European and Arabic works, dating to the Middle Ages, that support study in the history of printing and bookmaking.  Also contained are numerous first editions of notable authors, including Charles Dickens and Mark Twain and an internationally prominent collection of published works by and about William Faulkner, along with original research materials accumulated by Faulkner biographer Joseph Blotner.

Kent will hire a recognized, award-winning preservation consultant to assess environmental conditions, storage policies, and provide strategies to optimize preservation. Assessment will include development and implementation of a disaster preparedness and recovery plan. The assessor will provide condition reports pertaining to the needs of the University Archives, the regional history collections of southeast Missouri and the rare book collection. While the department contains a substantial rare book collection considering its University’s size, this assessment will provide insights pertaining to all aspects of the operations of Special Collections and Archives. Recommendations will be used to establish policies and procedures to integrate preservation practices into daily work, strategic planning, and development activities. Outcomes will improve the level of care and use by focusing on the needs of collections and by increasing communication with stakeholders.

A book-length study of the language of early American cross-cultural interactions.

This book's goal is to revitalize the discussion of inter-cultural relations in early American studies. Much of the most influential scholarship in interdisciplinary colonial studies tries not just to illuminate the past but to provide a new imagination of a shared future among all the descendants of the colonial world. Yet an outdated vocabulary of cultural interchange hinders the field, which has struggled to attract Native American and African American scholars in significant numbers. This lexicon has also kept its work from being taken up in other fields. In five short chapters drawing on both major texts and archival sources, this book traces where terms like "reciprocity," "understanding," "piety," and others came from and how they have evolved from the ways they were used in early colonial contexts. It also looks forward, showing how re-assessing such terms can help students of early America speak to broader questions and bring more diverse voices into the field.

Completion of a book-length study of the impact of intellectual property law on narrative-based franchises in film, television, and other media.

Over the last decade, the narrative-based franchise has come to be seen as one of the twentieth-first century’s paradigmatic storytelling forms. Narrative Inc. argues that in order to understand the significance of this form, we must situate it within the practice of intellectual property law. This project thus offers a dual history of narrative-based franchise production and intellectual property law in the United States, beginning in the early twentieth century and ending in the present-day. Arguing that changes in the franchise and the law have been mutually constitutive, each simultaneously the product and cause of the other, I trace how the logic of the franchise as a narrative form has changed in tandem with that of copyright, trademark, and unfair competition law. Narrative Inc. focuses on a series of specific franchises, demonstrating how their production was bound up—often quite literally through lawsuits—with the discourse and practice of intellectual property law.

Research and writing leading to publication of a book on how Chinese poetry of the Tang Period (618-907) was read and understood by Chinese scholars of the 10th to 12th centuries.

My project investigates the critical works that Chinese scholars of the Five Dynasties (907-976) and Northern Song (976-1127) used to define the literary legacy of their predecessor dynasty, the Tang (618-907). Writing the Tang will explore the multiple, overlapping interpretations of Tang writers and texts found in printed works that circulated widely for centuries. I analyze some of the most interventionist and influential works from the period: biographies of writers in the two Tang dynastic histories; anthologies of Tang prose and poetry; and popular anecdote collections about Tang writers and texts. Together, these works created an enduring portrait of the Tang as Chinese literature's "golden age," a view that idealized Tang literary aesthetics yet increasingly downplayed the political and social role of literary writing in Tang culture. My book will challenge this perspective on the Tang by exposing the interpretative practices that created it.

Preparation of a digital edition of the annotations on a 1527 copy of Ptolemy's Geography that illuminate the understanding and teaching of geography in the early 16th century.

I seek a ten-month Mellon Fellowship for Digital Publication to fund the completion of my transcription, English translation, and study of the annotations in a copy of the 1525 edition of Ptolemy’s Geography that is currently divided between Princeton and a private collection in Brussels. The annotations, written in Latin in about 1527, are extremely profuse, were made for a student, and contain original geographical thought. They are valuable for studies of the reception of Ptolemy’s Geography, of sixteenth-century geographical education, and of European intellectual networks. The only good format in which to publish them is in a digital edition that shows images of the pages and thus the context of each annotation, with a full transcription and English translation, all searchable. Princeton has agreed to host the digital edition on its server in an instantiation of the open-source Mellon-funded Archaeology of Reading platform for digital editions of annotated early modern books.

A book-length study on Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, and the politics that led to his trial and execution for treason in 1601 under Queen Elizabeth I.

This project challenges the accepted understanding of how James VI of Scotland was able to succeed Elizabeth I on the English throne in 1603, thereby transforming Tudor England into Stuart Britain. Using an unprecedented range of original sources, it offers a radically new appraisal of the political significance of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, and of the 'Essex Rising' which resulted in his execution in 1601. Building on this foundation, it outlines a new political narrative for the period 1598-1603, setting English events within a broader British context and revealing a 'secret history' of James's path to the English crown. Methodologically, this project breaks new ground in early modern British history by the quantity and richness of its archival sources, its commitment to reading all key documents in their original manuscript form, and its extensive use of literary sources. The project's chief outcome will be the completion of a substantial monograph entitled The Hunted Hart: Robert Earl of Essex, Queen Elizabeth I, and the Politics of Treason in Shakespeare’s Britain.

A book-length study of the role of science and technology in the life and writings of Edgar Allan Poe.

In Edgar Allan Poe’s famous tales, delusional narrators recount gory scenes of murder, madness, and despair. Yet he also wrote in depth about science, technology, and certainty. Trained as an engineer at West Point, he published a seashell guidebook and wrote on daguerreotypes and cryptography. By the 1830s, the “American experiment” had acquired astonishing equipment powered by electricity and steam; audiences confronted theories of species change, convertible fluids, and the birth and death of stars. Yet the USA's lack of stable scientific institutions opened the way for confusion, controversy, and hoaxes. The proposed book sets Poe's life and work in the tumultuous spaces in which new knowledge was debated, from Richmond and Baltimore to Philadelphia and New York, revealing his unique combination of visionary romanticism, skepticism, and enthusiasm for new sciences and machines. It casts new light on both a fascinating author and a decisive period in American science and culture.

A book-length study of the foundations of Confucian political thought.

My proposed book project, provisionally titled 'The Foundations of Confucian Political Thought: History, Law, and the Political Community,' will focus on the intersection of the concepts of time and space in Classical Confucian thought. More specifically, the project aims to delineate the Confucian conception of the political community by asking such questions as: What are the criteria for membership in it? Is territory important, why, and how? What explains the Confucian concern for the past? Can this concern with the past be considered sacred? Can history (as opposed to religion or metaphysics more broadly) be the normative foundation of Confucian political thought? The project aims to contribute to the expansion of the study of political philosophy and the history of political thought beyond the Western tradition.

A book-length study of the weekly newspaper columns of four Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) writers in 1930s and 1940s Wisconsin.

In the 1930s and 1940s, four members of the Ho-Chunk Nation in Wisconsin developed an innovative form of indigenous media activism, writing weekly “Indian News” columns in local white-run newspapers published in towns near their homes. Their columns became popular with non-Indian readers even as they gave voice to Ho-Chunk frustrations and outrage over the discrimination and poverty they faced in American society. This book project examines the unique and previously forgotten corpus of over 1,300 articles they wrote, exploring how the four columnists addressed some of the most important years in American Indian history, during which they confronted the challenges of the Great Depression and World War II and debated the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. The latter allowed Indian communities to create new tribal governments, offering Ho-Chunk people the most significant opportunity for collective action they had encountered since being forced to cede their homeland a century earlier.

Preparation of a book-length study on the painter Angela Hampel (b. 1956) and the situation of female artists from East Germany.

This book focuses on one of East Germany’s most successful and outspoken contemporary artists, Angela Hampel, an installation and performance artist and Neo-expressionist painter who exhibited on both sides of the Berlin Wall in the 1980s. It seeks to understand the impact of social policies on women’s art and position in the art world by investigating the challenges Hampel faced in a society that claimed women’s equality without having actually achieved it. By examining Hampel’s work and reception within the social, cultural, and political contexts of East Germany, this book will offer a deeper understanding of the obstacles women artists faced in the Socialist East as well as an alternative perspective from which to consider women’s conditions in the West since 1945.

A preservation assessment of special collections at East Stroudsburg University. A consultant would provide preservation recommendations to provide better long-term care for two collections in particular: the Al Cohn Memorial Jazz Collection, consisting of 16,000 items with oral histories, photographs, sheet music manuscripts, audio recordings, and accompanying materials, mostly from the 1940s; and the Sterling Strauser Collection of outsider art, including about 200 works by folk artists.

Concerns related to the storage and management of the Sterling Strauser Collection and the Al Cohn Memorial Jazz Collection, in addition to the preparation for a move to the new building, necessitate a preservation assessment by a professional consultant trained in the care of cultural collections. The consultant will survey the collections, review policies regarding collection management, and evaluate storage and exhibit areas to identify strengths and potential vulnerabilities, and will recommend steps to take to ensure the longevity of the collections. A written report created by the consultant will assist those involved with the management of the collections in prioritizing time and funds for future projects.

Research and writing leading to publication of two articles on the cultural, economic, and ethical issues affecting live organ donation in contemporary Japan.

In technologized societies, traditional moral notions of kinship obligation are being stretched and challenged as medical advances extend life. I seek to explore how imperatives to care for others are being conceptualized and materialized in the context of emerging choices around organ donation and life extension in Japan. Japan is an important site to explore these tensions, a country with the highest per capita rate of people on kidney dialysis in the OECD, and a small yet growing number of citizens living with kidney transplants, mostly received from living donors who are family members. The project seeks to explore medical decision-making and the cultural and social meaning accorded to live kidney donation in the context of the massive business of dialysis in Japan and a system of social welfare that relies heavily on women’s care for family members.

Completion of a book-length study of the aesthetics of German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803).

This project, to write a book presenting J. G. Herder’s aesthetic theory, has three central arguments. First, I interpret Herder's aesthetics as a naturalist theory, accounting for aesthetic value and art production on the basis of understanding human beings as organisms conditioned by and responding to their environments, both natural and social. I argue that Herder’s theory thus constitutes a pivotal moment in the philosophical tradition: the transition from eighteenth-century philosophies of taste to nineteenth-century systematic philosophies of the arts. For Herder argues that to understand aesthetic response (taste), one must understand the objects and socio-historical contexts that elicit and form such responsiveness. In emphasizing the place of aesthetics within embodied human existence and cultural contexts, third, Herder’s aesthetics is also a neglected alternative to the dominant understanding of aesthetics and art in the tradition, as disembodied and disinterested.