Congratulations to the twenty-five MLA members who are among the recipients of the National Endowment for the Humanities grants announced in January 2024. Their projects include the integration of six ancient languages into an open-source Braille digital translation platform; the creation of digital humanities resources that support undergraduate and K–12 teaching about local Indigenous history and culture; a critical edition of the writings of the author, poet, interpreter, and politician Ismayl Urbain; a book on the role of racial discourses in modern Japanese literature; and much more.
Danielle Spratt, California State University, Northridge
Project Title: Blank Spaces in the Library Archives
Project Description: A two-year initiative to develop an archival project involving students and the surrounding community.
Mark Algee-Hewitt, Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
Project Title: Digital Accessibility for Blind Scholars of Antiquity
Project Description: The integration of six ancient languages into an open-source Braille digital translation platform to enable the creation of digital editions and primary sources for blind and low-vision humanities students and researchers.
Katherine Roseau, Mercer University, Macon
Project Title: Integrating Voices of Refugees and Immigrants: Faculty and Curriculum Development
Project Description: A two-year project to expand the French and Spanish curriculum to include refugee and immigrant studies.
Lara Crowley, Northern Illinois University
Project Title: Dubiously Donne: Attribution and Literary Reputation in Early Modern England
Project Description: Research and writing of a book on misattributed early modern English texts and how such misattributions reflect ideas about authorship, reputation, reader taste, and canon formation.
Lisa Tatonetti, Kansas State University
Project Title: Kansas Land Treaties Project
Project Description: A three-year project to revise curriculum and create digital humanities resources that support undergraduate and K–12 teaching about local Indigenous history and culture.
Megan DeVirgilis, Morgan State University
Project Title: Gothic Foundations: The Civilizing Project of a Forgotten Nineteenth-Century Novel by Colombia’s First President of African Descent
Project Description: Research and writing of an article about Rosina o La prisión del castillo de Chagres (Rosina or The Prison at Chagres Castle), a Gothic novel written by Juan José Nieto Gil (1804–66), the first Colombian president of African descent.
Samuel Spinner, Johns Hopkins University, MD
Project Title: Monuments of Books: Yiddish Holocaust Literature from Latin America to Eastern Europe
Project Description: Research and writing leading to a book on Yiddish Holocaust literature (1946–66).
Kim Evelyn, Bowie State University
Project Title: Travelers in Caribbean Texts: 1950s–2020s
Project Description: Research and writing leading to a book about the literary depictions of visitors to English-speaking Caribbean islands, returning Caribbean migrants, and inter- and intra-island travelers in the Caribbean from the 1950s to the2020s.
Joseph Rezek, Trustees of Boston University
Project Title: The Racialization of Print
Project Description: Writing of a book on the history of the transmission of racial knowledge and racial ideology through reading, 1598–1840.
Christophe Wall-Romana, Regents of the University of Minnesota
Project Title: Translation and Critical Edition of Selected Writings by Ismayl Urbain (1812–1884)
Project Description: Research and writing leading to a critical edition of the writings of the author, poet, interpreter, and politician Ismayl Urbain (1812–84).
Stephanie Kirk, Washington University in St. Louis
Project Title: Humanities at Work Graduate Internships for the Next Generation
Project Description: Development of a three-year internship program for fifteen doctoral students in the humanities.
Zachary Turpin, Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska
Project Title: Between the Columns: A Tool Kit for Periodical Authorship Attribution and Display
Project Description: Refinement, expansion, and documentation of digital methods and tools to assist researchers in identifying authorship in unattributed content printed in newspapers and other periodicals.
Justin Gifford, University of Nevada, Reno
Project Title: Time Considered as a Helix: The Life of Samuel R. Delany
Project Description: Research and writing of a biography of the Black science fiction writer Samuel R. Delany (b. 1942).
Elizabeth Emery, Montclair State University
Project Title: Florine Langweil and the Rise of the East Asian Art Market (1852–1945)
Project Description: Research and writing leading to a book about the Alsatian art dealer Florine Langweil (1861–1958) and the emergence of the international art market for East Asian art from 1852 to 1945.
Stacy Klein, Rutgers University, New Brunswick
Project Title: The Militancy of Gender and the Making of Sexual Difference in Early English Literature (ca. 700–1100 CE)
Project Description: Writing to complete a book on the understanding of sexual difference in early medieval English literature using works such as medical treatises, histories, homilies, poems, riddles, and folk charms.
Kelley Kreitz, Pace University, New York
Project Title: The Ground beneath Our Feet: Centering Place-Based Experiential Humanities in the Curriculum
Project Description: A two-year project to form a local humanities consortium that would facilitate experiential learning and public humanities projects within the undergraduate curriculum.
Kelley Kreitz, Pace University, New York
Project Title: Creating Enhanced Environments for Advancing an Experiential Approach to the Humanities
Project Description: Design, construction, and equipment for three experiential learning spaces (storytelling studio, makerspace and humanities lab, and multimedia screening room) at Pace University, New York.
William Bridges, University of Rochester
Project Title: A Literary History of African American and Japanese Cultural Exchange (1870–2015)
Project Description: Research and writing leading to a book on the role of racial discourses in modern Japanese literature from the late nineteenth century to the present.
Annette Joseph-Gabriel, Duke University
Project Title: Enslaved Childhoods: Survival and Storytelling in the Atlantic World
Project Description: Research and writing leading to a book on slavery and childhood in the Atlantic world during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Diana Garvin, University of Oregon
Project Title: The Bean in the Machine: The Global History of Coffee under Italian Fascism
Project Description: Research and writing leading to a book on the coffee trade in Italy, Brazil, and Africa from 1922 to 1945.
S. Pearl Brilmyer, Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania
Project Title: Lou Andreas-Salomé’s Psychoanalytic Theory
Project Description: A translation and edition of the psychoanalytical writings of Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861–1937), a pioneering female Russian-German writer and student of Sigmund Freud.
Maziyar Faridi, Clemson University
Project Title: Rhythms of Relation: Decolonizing Identity in Iranian Modernism
Project Description: Writing of a book on how authors in Iran during the Pahlavi dynasty negotiated their place vis-à-vis Iranian literary history, the Persian language, and the allure of global Modernism.
Janice Hawes, South Carolina State University
Project Title: Developing an Asynchronous Online MA in English
Project Description: A three-year project to develop a 30-credit online asynchronous graduate program in English.
Riya Das, Prairie View A&M University
Project Title: Critical Edition of The Daughters of Danaus by Mona Caird
Project Description: Research and writing for a critical edition of Mona Caird’s The Daughters of Danaus, a novel published in England in 1894.
Claudia Stokes, Trinity University
Project Title: Critical Edition of the Religious Writings of Harriet Beecher Stowe
Project Description: Research and writing of a two-volume critical edition of Harriet Beecher’s Stowe’s religious writings.
Derek Handley, Board of Regents of University of Wisconsin System, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Project Title: Developing a Digital Platform for the Mapping Racism and Resistance in Milwaukee County Project
Project Description: The development of a platform to map and visualize racial covenants in early-twentieth-century Milwaukee.