Congratulations to the seventeen MLA members who were awarded National Endowment for the Humanities grants in January 2025! Their projects include new humanities courses that engage critically with AI, educational resources about Quechua and Zapotec languages and cultures, a collection of oral histories from residents of Jersey City, a book analyzing how Jack Kerouac’s bilingualism shaped his work, and more.
Jean-Christophe Cloutier, Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania
Project Title: Continental Kerouac: Bilingualism, Translation, and the Franco-American Experience
Project Description: Research and writing resulting in a book examining the impact of Jack Kerouac’s bilingualism and biculturalism on his style and conception of American literature.
Margaret Cohen, Leland Stanford Junior University
Project Title: Developing an Oceanic Humanities Curriculum
Project Description: A two-year project to develop and implement an interdisciplinary oceanic humanities program.
Joy Connolly, American Council of Learned Societies
Project Title: National Convening for Graduate Education in the Humanities
Project Description: A three-year cooperative agreement between the American Council of Learned Societies and the NEH to plan and host a national convening to evaluate the current state of humanities graduate education, make recommendations for graduate programs to prepare students for a variety of humanities-related careers, and articulate a strategic vision for graduate education in the humanities.
Sean Egan, Hudson County Community College, NJ
Project Title: Hudson Oral History Project
Project Description: A three-year project to collect oral histories from Jersey City residents and incorporate them into history and composition courses.
Margaret Galvan, University of Florida
Project Title: LGBTQ+ Artists Innovating Comics and Building Community in the 1980s–1990s
Project Description: Research and writing resulting in a book on the comic formats innovated by LGBTQ+ cartoonists in the 1980s and 1990s.
Déborah Gómez, Florida Memorial University
Project Title: Miami’s Unique Advantages to Global Pathways: Enhancing HBCU Students’ Opportunities to Succeed through Spanish Proficiency
Project Description: A three-year project to develop three new courses in Spanish language and Latino culture in the United States, with an emphasis on the South Florida region.
Tarez Graban, Florida State University
Project Title: Rhetorika Afrika: Finding (and Losing) Feminist Discourses in the Transnational Archive
Project Description: Research and writing resulting in a book examining how archival practices may obscure our understanding of African feminist legacies.
Juliet Guzzetta, Michigan State University
Project Title: Acting Class: Lessons from Franca Rame
Project Description: Research and writing leading to a book about Franca Rame (1929–2013), an Italian actor, feminist, and political activist, and her contributions to post–World War II Italian leftist political thought.
Wilma Loayza and Leila Gomez, University of Colorado, Boulder
Project Title: Expanding and Strengthening the Latin American Indigenous Languages and Cultures Program
Project Description: A two-year grant to develop course modules and educational resources about Quechua and Zapotec languages and cultures.
Carmen Nocentelli, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
Project Title: Black Legends and the Invention of Europe
Project Description: Research and writing leading to a book that examines how race and blackness defined intra-European national identities in the early modern period.
Anna Nogar, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
Project Title: Aurora Lucero-White Lea (1893–1963), Twentieth-Century Pan-Americanism, and Indo-Hispano Folklore
Project Description: Writing resulting in a book on the early-twentieth-century New Mexican folklorist Aurora Lucero-White Lea.
Kenton Rambsy, Howard University
Project Title: Creating a Team-Taught Interdisciplinary Course and Digital Library on Black Liberation in the USA and Caribbean
Project Description: A three-year curriculum development project focused on the histories of Afro-diasporan liberation movements in the United States and the Caribbean.
Amanda Smith, University of California, Santa Cruz
Project Title: The Nature of Conflict: Rivers, Violence, and Healing in Colombia after the Peace Accords
Project Description: Research and writing leading to a book about the significance of rivers and water ecology to artists and writers in Colombia during its civil war, 1964–2016.
Diana Taylor, New York University
Project Title: Shape-Shifting Performance
Project Description: Research and writing leading to a digital multimedia monograph on indigenous performance theory and the work of the Mexican performer Jesusa Rodríguez (b. 1955).
Maite Urcaregui, San José State University Research Foundation
Project Title: Seeing Citizenship: Picturing Political Belonging in Multiethnic Graphic Literature
Project Description: Research and writing of a book examining the relationship between and among race, citizenship, and political belonging.
Zachary Zimmer, University of California, Santa Cruz
Project Title: THINK at UCSC: Technology and Humanities Integrated Knowledge
Project Description: A three-year project to develop humanities courses and modules that engage critically with artificial intelligence.