Funded Projects Query Form
55 matches

Research and writing of a monograph examining how early twentieth century American authors expand representations of trauma.

Almost one-hundred years ago, modernists writing from the margins of a literary movement—or those who wrote about race, gender, sexuality, class, and ability—provided a counternarrative to the dominant psychoanalytic theory of trauma. “Aesthetics of Survival: Counternarratives of Trauma in American Modernist Literature” traces this alternative history to argue that American authors of the 1920s to 1940s—including Richard Bruce Nugent, Langston Hughes, H.D, Lola Ridge, Djuna Barnes, and Zora Neale Hurston—wrote out of the experience of social injustice to expand representations of trauma. Rather than locate trauma in major catastrophe, sudden accidents, and the imminent threat of physical death, as Sigmund Freud did in his work, these writers depict the impact of durational, intersectional, and collective violences to ultimately emphasize resiliency in the face of oppression.

Research and writing leading to a digital monograph on the writing, publishing history, and reception of Langston Hughes’s A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia (1934).

The digital book I propose is an on online, open-access original contribution to the body of knowledge on Langston Hughes, designed for scholars as well as for the general public. It will expand existing resources by revealing Hughes’s prominence in the struggle for racial equality and social justice leading up to the Civil Rights movement.

A preservation assessment of the archives of the Academy of American Poets, founded in 1934 and with members in all 50 states. The assessment would enable the organization to prioritize collection care and access in advance of its 90th anniversary in 2024. The collection of over 500 linear feet dates from its establishment to the present and includes writings and correspondence of notable American poets, such as E. E. Cummings, Lucille Clifton, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, and Sylvia Plath, as well as issues of the organization’s magazine, American Poets, photographs of poets, and audio recordings of poetry readings.

The Academy of American Poets seeks $10,000 to support our hiring a consultant to assess our unique collection so we might ensure its preservation and prepare to make it available to the public.

Preparation for publication of five volumes in the series Music of the United States of America. (36 months)

Music of the United States of America (MUSA) is a series of scholarly editions of music that aims to represent the depth and diversity of our nation’s heritage by publishing musical works of exemplary artistic quality and historical significance, targeting scholars, performers, students, and the general public. MUSA seeks to expand the art of critical editing beyond classical concert music to include new genres and styles previously unaddressed by the discipline, including music created by women and minorities, and other composers historically excluded from academic research. MUSA is a project of the American Musicological Society (AMS), the premier organization in the United States devoted to musical scholarship, and is guided by its Committee on the Publication of American Music (COPAM), which serves as MUSA’s editorial board. Each MUSA edition is exhaustively researched by expert Volume Editors and typically is newly engraved by the award-winning music publisher A-R Editions.

A digitization day to help chronicle the history of Lincoln University, the first university for African Americans, and of Hinsonville, Pennsylvania, the town founded by free Blacks where it resides.  Many of the university’s alumni were involved in important historical moments, such as the Civil War and the Philadelphia trolley boycott.  Lincoln University would work with the Chester County Historical Society to hold the “Heritage Day.”  All digitized content would be made available to the public through the University’s website.  Public events would include walking tours of the campus, lectures by notable historians such as Henry Louis Gates, a community-wide reading campaign, and a culminating exhibit to showcase the digitized content.

This proposal addresses the critical need to document the personal, professional, and civic experiences of the people whose lives contributed to the founding of Lincoln University, PA. Descendants of residents of Hinsonville, an early settlement of free African American landowners and farmers, now Lincoln University, will be invited to bring family memorabilia—including photos, funeral programs, articles, Bibles and other family documents—to be digitized and catalogued. This "Heritage Day" will be open to the public and held in the Langston Hughes Memorial Library. It will provide participants with free digitized copies of family memorabilia and of oral interviews conducted by program consultants and students trained in oral history interview procedures. Heritage Day will be integrated with a series of genealogy and oral interview workshops, a Heritage Speakers Series, Heritage Walking tours of Lincoln University's campus and surrounding areas, and a community wide reading campaign.

Upgraded environmental monitoring equipment for the Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia.  The Rosenbach, which affiliated with the Free Library of Philadelphia in 2013, holds the personal collection of rare book, manuscript, and art dealers Dr. A.S.W. and his brother Philip Rosenbach, who helped to build the holdings at the Folger and Huntington Libraries.  Notable items include the sole surviving copy of Benjamin Franklin’s first Poor Richard’s Almanac; the manuscript of James Joyce’s Ulysses; the papers of modernist poet Marianne Moore; Bram Stoker’s notes for Dracula; rare editions of books by Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, and Lewis Carroll; and art objects including Egyptian sculpture, English furniture, and American portraiture.  The museum hosts many activities for the public, including regular exhibitions, hands-on tours, reading groups, a Bloomsday celebration, and research hours.  The organization has also partnered with local elementary schools, inspiring projects such as studying the Yellow Fever epidemic, learning about poetry through the letters of Langston Hughes, and military base students writing to their own deployed family members after reading Civil War soldiers’ letters to their families.  A 2006 PAG supported the purchase of environmental monitoring equipment, but those data loggers are no longer accurate and cannot be recalibrated.  This equipment would be replaced with new models and a calibrator, based on recommendations from a 2011 risk assessment.

The Rosenbach was founded in the first half of the twentieth century by Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach and his brother Philip, preeminent dealers in rare books. The brothers' personal collection features treasures that they were unable to part with, including the only surviving copy of Benjamin Franklin's first Poor Richard's Almanac and the manuscript of James Joyce's Ulysses. The Rosenbach is home to a collection of nearly 400,000 rare books, manuscripts, and fine and decorative art objects, including some of the best-known literary and historical objects in the world. The Rosenbach requests funds to improve environmental monitoring equipment, including new data loggers to monitor temperature and humidity, and testing equipment. These tools will help maintain appropriate and stable environmental conditions for the objects in the collection. Monitoring environmental conditions has a direct impact on the long-term preservation of the Rosenbach's collections and the ability to exhibit them safely.

A three-week summer institute for thirty schoolteachers on the urban riots of 1967, placed in a broad historical context.

The Langston Hughes Center proposes a three-week institute in June 2017 for thirty secondary teachers to study race, urban communities, and civil disturbances in historical context. It will feature a broad humanities outlook to place events in 1967 in perspective, utilizing an interdisciplinary faculty with differing viewpoints and diverse racial and gender identities, making connections between prior incidents and today. The institute will encourage teachers to think about the events and issues affecting their students from multiple viewpoints, becoming familiar with primary and secondary texts as well as innovative humanities-based strategies for engaging critical subject matter about race and conflict. Under the guidance of institute scholars, participants will develop web-based portfolios that include lesson plans suitable for their home institutions.

A preservation assessment and development of a preservation plan for the special collections and archives of Lincoln University, the oldest historically black university in the United States. The university's rare books, periodicals, government documents, pamphlets, video and music recordings, photographs, paintings, and other materials document African American and United States history. Examples include a significant Pan-Africanism collection of 7,742 books, 5 musical scores, 18 serials, and numerous photographs and audiovisual materials on efforts to unite African peoples throughout the diaspora, as well as archives of prominent Lincoln alumni, such as a collection of over 4,000 items on the poet Langston Hughes.

The Lincoln University requests funds to hire Thomas F.R. Clareson as a consultant to develop a preservation plan for the University's Special Collections and Archives, which hold several significant collections of extreme importance for understanding African American history and culture as well as the relationship between Lincoln, the nation, and the African continent. Within these collections are numerous rare books, unbound periodicals, unclassed government reports, serials, pamphlets, video and music recordings, photographs, paintings, and other items dating from the mid-nineteenth century through present day. These collections have been used for a wide variety of research, scholarship, educational activities, and exhibitions. Mr. Clareson will conduct a preservation site survey to assess the building condition, review the condition of the collection and storage, and consult on preservation policies and procedures for the collection.

My book explores the connections between a selected group of black diasporan and West African Francophone intellectuals whose published and (or) archived writings allow us to study their little-known involvement in major historical forces such as World War I, World War II, the 1955 Bandung Conference, the 1956 Congress of Black Writers in Paris, and the 1966 World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar. Studying these writings, I trace the roots of black diasporan and West African Francophone solidarity against colonialism and racism between 1914 and 1966. Focusing on the African Americans (W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and Mercer Cook), Caribbeans (Marcus Garvey and Aime Cesaire), and Francophone West Africans (the Senegalese Blaise Diagne, Leopold S. Senghor, and Alioune Diop, the Beninese Kojo T. Houenou, and the Ivorian Bernard Dadie), I show how the historical experiences tested the resilience of the black thinkers against oppression and their ties with one another.

A two-year program of study, framed by two conferences, in which ten faculty would conduct research and develop teaching modules on Lincoln University's diasporic heritage.

"Lincoln University of Pennsylvania's Global Heritage and Legacy" consists of a two-year program of study, framed by two conferences, in which ten faculty members conduct research and develop teaching modules on Lincoln University's diasporic heritage. This project seeks to revive the humanities at what has become an increasingly science-dominated institution. It does so by shaping a program that harnesses Lincoln University's distinctive history as the first institution of higher learning for African Americans (1854), ample legacy of prominent graduates, and ongoing connections with Africa and the Caribbean. Lincoln University taught Liberian boys beginning in 1873 and, nearly a century later, students from the Caribbean and emerging African nations. It graduated the first president of independent Nigeria and the first prime minister of Ghana. Lincoln University's distinctive humanities alumni include Langston Hughes of the Harlem Renaissance; the late writer and musician Gil Scott Heron; Larry Neal, founder of the Black Arts Movement; and film historian Donald Bogle. The program opens with a four-day summer institute with topics including "Lincoln University poets and their impact on the world; the University's impact on African history and Africa's impact on the University; the University and the Civil Rights Movement; and Frederick Douglass as a catalyzing figure for humanities studies." Sessions also introduce faculty to the university's online archives and collection of African art. During the following academic year, ten core faculty, selected through competition, conduct research and develop course modules that build on the institute topics and university resources. They present this work at a two-day humanities conference in the fall of 2013. Though the summer institute and fall conference are be open to all faculty and the general public, priority for the core faculty would be given to those who teach first-year students in order to maximize the program's impact.

Two one-week Landmarks workshops for eighty school teachers using New York City landmarks to illuminate local and national history since 1877.

"Empire City: New York from 1877-2001" consists of two one-week NEH Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshops held during summer 2012 for eighty school teachers using New York City landmarks to illuminate major themes in local and national history since 1877. The workshops use lectures, discussions, and site visits to situate New York City within broader urban history and American history. Co-directors are Kenneth Jackson (Columbia University) and Karen Markoe (State University of New York, Maritime College). The program opens with consideration of Manhattan's rise to national dominance after the Civil War, followed by a walking tour of Central Park and visit to the New-York Historical Society, where Sandra Trenholm (Gilder Lehrman Collection) guides participants in working with primary documents. Day two's focus on Gilded Age New York includes prizewinning biographer David Nasaw (Graduate Center of City University of New York) on "Andrew Carnegie and His Gospel of Wealth," and a visit to magnate Henry Clay Frick's mansion. To explore immigration, participants read Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives and E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime, then experience immigrant neighborhoods including Five Points, Little Italy, and Chinatown. The program also addresses the "Black Metropolis," including visits to Harlem and the Bronx as well as readings from Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison. On the final day of the workshop, Joshua Freeman (Queens College) covers the transition from industrial to service and residential use, as seen in the Meat Packing District. Concluding the site visit at Ground Zero, project director Kenneth Jackson discusses the local and national effects of 9/11.

The equivalent of four fellowships each year for three years.

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of The New York Public Library (NYPL) requests a grant of $316,400 over four years from the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship Programs at Independent Research Institutions to support its Scholars-in-Residence Program. Such a grant, in addition to cost share provided by the Library, will allow the Schomburg Center to make six- and twelve-month residency fellowships available to at least twelve scholars over three years.

"Soul Call" explores the transnational and cross-genre artistic collaborations of a generation of black artists including choreographer and anthropologist Katherine Dunham, jazz composer and band leader Duke Ellington, and writer Langston Hughes. Drawing on Michael Warner’s Public and Counter Publics, I argue that the generative performances of these artists helped call into being a new public culture of modernity over decades of the circulation of their art through multiple venues and various shifting industries, from clubs through Hollywood films and shorts. Exploring the transnational as well as cross-genre collaborations of these artists offers another way of imagining interdisciplinary work at an earlier stage.

Endowment for publication subventions and an award program in musicology as well as fund-raising costs.

The American Musicological Society seeks an NEH challenge grant of $240,000, which with a 4:1 match will yield $1,200,000. These funds will endow four publication-related initiatives of the Society. The bulk of the funds ($900,000) will create a new subvention supporting the publication of first books by young scholars, whose work often represents the cutting edge of scholarly research, but whose careers are often at their most fragile or challenging point. The remainder will go primarily to existing publication subvention programs, supporting musicological books more generally ($125,000) as well as a monograph series sponsored by the Society ($100,000). These subventions aim to optimize the quality of the best scholarly books on music while keeping their prices affordable. Finally, we propose a new award for books on music in American culture ($50,000), a vital area of musical research that appeals to the broadest literary and musical public.

Joe Louis's life story illuminates many of the profound social transformations of twentieth-century America, including the Great Migration, industrialization, the Great Depression, World War II, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Black Power movement. My study will become the first comprehensive biography yet written about Joe Louis, a man who not only provided hope to millions of black Americans but who became a hero (perhaps the first black hero) of white America. Yet his story reveals the intractability of race; even as an icon to whites, Louis could not overcome the persistent white belief in black inferiority.

I propose to develop an article on Langston Hughes’s negotiations with political and ethical compromise. Always ambivalent about the virtue of compromise, Hughes nevertheless developed into a master of that unglamorous art, and my essay will show the effects of compromise in his poetry and prose as he responded to the challenges he faced as an African-American public intellectual. This essay draws together my published articles on Hughes and a piece now in progress, all of which show how Hughes labored to steer between various extremes. Ultimately I intend to synthesize this work in a book on Hughes’s "middle way" in ethics and aesthetics.

The development of curricular modules that explore the integration of African musical traditions into Caribbean culture and their influences on American music in the twentieth century.

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To support planning for a conference, lecture series, and performance discussion about the relationship of folklore and performance to the African- American experience as reflected in the works of Langston Hughes, 1902-1967.

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To support a variety of programs that will examine the life and work of African-American poet and author Langston Hughes.

To support planning for three symposia, an exhibition, and discussion programs based on the life and work of Langston Hughes, using as texts dramatic, musical, and film productions and books by and about Hughes.

To support the production of one film on Langston Hughes as part of a 13-part series for PBS on the world and work of American poets.