Congratulations to the twenty-two MLA members who are among the winners of the National Endowment for the Humanities grants announced in April 2020. Their projects include the development of an online directory of libraries, museums, and archives containing sources on Hispanic history in the United States; the creation of a minor in future studies; the implementation of a place-based curriculum in applied humanities focused on human-centered land use and historic preservation; and a study of cultural representations of the Korean War.

Humanities Collections and Reference Resources

Matt Cohen, University of Nebraska, Board of Regents

Project Title: Walt Whitman Archive Infrastructure Revitalization

Project Description: Revitalizing the digital architecture of the Walt Whitman Archive to make it easier to search and use the materials on the Web site. Specific improvements would include changing the programming framework; creating a machine-readable interface for the Web site’s code, images, and metadata; revising files to improve the metadata; and leveraging existing metadata through a new search engine.

Patricia Fumerton, University of California, Santa Barbara

Project Title: Early English Broadside Ballads: Local and Global

Project Description: The continued development of the English Broadside Ballad Archive (EBBA), with the addition of 1,178 pre-1701 printed ballad sheets from 101 institutions in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. In addition, the applicant would catalog 923 tune titles and approximately 18,200 woodcut impressions and would enhance access to the entire ballad collection through the project’s new Web site, EBBA 4.0.

Nicolas Kanellos, University of Houston

Project Title: Survey of Small Historical Societies, Libraries, and Museums for Hispanic Materials and Their Management

Project Description: The planning and development of an online directory of libraries, archives, and museums containing sources on Hispanic history and culture in the United States, from the colonial era through 1960, with a focus on small institutions in the South and Southeast.

Chon Noriega, University of California, Los Angeles

Project Title: Religion, Spirituality, and Faith in Mexican American Social History, 1940s–Present

Project Description: The arrangement, description, and selected digitization of archival collections pertaining to the role of religion in Latino history. Included are nine collections totaling 237 linear feet, among which are 12,000 photographs that would be digitized.

Humanities Connections Planning Grants

Sari Altschuler, Northeastern University

Project Title: Towards a Digital Health Humanities Curriculum: Tools and Strategies Project

Description: The development of a digital health humanities curriculum for undergraduates.

William Bridges, University of Rochester

Project Title: The Humanities and the Study of the Future

Project Description: A one-year planning grant to create a minor and three-course cluster in future studies.

Humanities Connections Implementation Grants

Kathleen Hanggi, Doane University

Project Title: Implementing a Certificate in Integrated Humanities Program

Project Description: A three-year project to implement a new general education certificate program in integrated humanities for psychology and biology majors.

Amy Woodbury Tease, Norwich University

Project Title: Building a Humanities-Centered Interdisciplinary Curriculum to Foster Citizen Scholars

Project Description: A three-year project to implement a new team-taught curriculum integrating humanities with the sciences and professional fields.

Holly Tucker; Elizabeth Meadows, Vanderbilt University

Project Title: An Experiential, Place-Based Curriculum for Historic Preservation and Humanities-Centered Land Use

Project Description: A two-year interdisciplinary curricular project to implement an experiential curriculum in the applied humanities.

Summer Stipends

Sophie Esch, Rice University

Project Title: Animals and Armed Conflict in Contemporary Literature from Latin America and Africa

Project Description: Writing one chapter of a book on animals and the experience of war in Latin American and African literature.

John Hay, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Project Title: The First Person in America: The Identity of the Narrator in the Nineteenth-Century U.S. Novel

Project Description: Writing four chapters of a book on the evolution of the narrator in nineteenth-century American fiction.

Michael Hill, College of William and Mary

Project Title: Chinese and Arabic Literatures at the End of Empire, 1850–1950

Project Description: Research and writing leading to a book on intellectual and literary exchanges between Egypt and China in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Emily Hyde, Rowan University

Project Title: Postcolonial Modernism and the Visual Book, 1947–1968

Project Description: Research and writing leading to a book on the modernist illustrations and visual imagery of postcolonial novels in English.

Jeehyun Lim, SUNY Research Foundation, University at Buffalo

Project Title: Unforgetting the Korean War: Cultural Representation and Memory, 1950–2017

Project Description: Writing of a chapter and related article for a book examining cultural representations of the Korean War.

Kirk Melnikoff, University of North Carolina, Charlotte

Project Title: Bookselling in Early Modern England

Project Description: Archival research leading to a monograph on bookselling in early modern England.

Ingrid Nelson, Trustees of Amherst College

Project Title: Ambient Media in Chaucer’s House of Fame

Project Description: Research leading to a book on the way that Chaucer discusses aural and textual media such as spoken word and manuscripts in his literary texts, and the ways in which he conceptualized the circulation of media and culture.

Sarah Nelson, University of Idaho

Project Title: The Correspondence of Italian-French Noblewoman Marie Mancini (1638–1715): A Digital Edition

Project Description: Research and writing leading to digital publication of the transcriptions, translations, and annotations of approximately twenty-five letters written by the Italo-French noblewoman Marie Mancini as well as the creation of the project Web site.

Elizabeth Rivlin, Clemson University

Project Title: Shakespeare and the American Middlebrow: Reading Publics, 1878–Present

Project Description: Research and writing a history of how American individuals and organizations have engaged the plays of William Shakespeare since the late nineteenth century.

John Shank, Regents of the University of Minnesota

Project Title: A History of the French Académie Royale des Sciences, 1495–1746

Project Description: Research and writing leading to publication of the first volume of a planned three-volume history of the French Royal Academy of Sciences from 1495 to 1746.

Bryan Sinche, University of Hartford

Project Title: Self Publication and Nineteenth-Century African American Literature Project

Description: Research and writing of one chapter of a book on self-published writings by African Americans in the nineteenth century

Leah Vonderheide, Oberlin College

Project Title: Cinema of Indigenous Maori Filmmaker and Actress Merata Mita (1942–2010)

Project Description: Research and writing leading to a book about Merata Mita (1942–2010) and her film and television work in New Zealand over three decades, from the context of global cinema and feminist film practice.