Humanities Focus Grants

History faculty from Saginaw Valley State University in Saginaw, Michigan, led a two-week summer workshop for twelve local secondary school teachers on recent scholarship and approaches to the American Civil War. Participants considered the idea of the Civil War as "total war," social conflict in the North and the South, and the war's impact on women, slaves, and freedmen. The workshop then linked this social history approach to military history by focusing on the experiences of the soldiers on both sides. The workshop concluded with time for the participants to discuss ways to incorporate what they had learned into their teaching. Participants read works such as James McPherson's Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution and For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War, as well as anthologies and other articles on these issues. The workshop also drew upon primary materials that were available online from the Library of Congress, the Freedmen and Southern Society Project, Louisiana State University's Civil War Center, and other sources. The directors visited the participants in their classrooms during the following school year to evaluate the success of the curriculum created as a result of the workshops.

A Humanities Focus Grant supported a year-long faculty seminar at Prince George's Community College on Aristotle's works and contribution to Western thought. Twelve faculty participants from various departments read six of Aristotle's works as well as secondary materials in the areas of metaphysics, ethics, politics, natural science, rhetoric, and poetics. Guest scholars from Georgetown University, Notre Dame University, and other institutions led the sessions. The main goal of the project was to reinvigorate the scholarly life of the faculty members in the middle years of their careers at the college and to create an intellectual community on campus. Other anticipated outcomes included department-based forums and an interdisciplinary Honors Program colloquium.

Olathe School District in Olathe, Kansas, received a Humanities Focus Grant to support professional development activities in East Asian Studies for its teachers. Participants took part in seven study sessions led by University of Kansas scholars to explore Japanese and Chinese history and culture, beginning with the influence of geography and proceeding to considerations of language and writing systems, Confucianism and Taoism, literature, and art. Sources varied from The Analects and Dream of the Red Chamber to the art collections at the Nelson-Atkins Museum and the University's Spencer Museum of Art, both with excellent collections of Asian works. Following these content sessions, additional meetings for teachers and scholars focused on curricular design and creating model lesson plans. The course conformed to the Kansas state standards of learning so that it served not only as a blueprint for further curriculum development in Olathe, but also as an adoptable course for other Kansas schools.

SUNY at Plattsburgh received a Humanities Focus Grant to collaborate with Dartmouth College in conducting a series of faculty seminars and follow-up activities to improve the teaching of the ethics of civic responsibility. Over two semesters, faculty members from each institution discussed ideas and identified issues for a new course on civic responsibility for use at both institutions. Among the topics considered were the nature of public philosophy; the development of democratic ideas from Greek and Roman times through the Enlightenment and classical liberalism; public philosophy and democratic traditions in the United States; the "enlargement of democracy" to include minorities, women, and other groups; factors that lead to civic engagement; the concept of civil society; and ethics in contemporary life. Among the authors considered were Aristotle, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexis de Tocqueville, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, John Dewey, Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Bellah, and Charles Frankel.

A list of the Humanities Focus Grants awarded in 2002 is also available.