Special Projects
Girls, Incorporated, a national youth development organization with 137 affiliated organizations in 32 states, received an NEH grant to develop and test an after-school program in archaeology designed for girls ages twelve to fourteen. Called "Girls Dig It," the program explores the interdisciplinary nature of archaeology and uses hands-on activities to develop investigative and critical thinking skills. The implementation grant supported development of the program with the advice of a large team of scholars, teachers, and youth development professionals; field testing in six cities around the country; evaluation; and final dissemination of the curriculum and training guide.
The Great Plains Chautauqua Society brings a week-long series of public programs featuring living history presentations to thirty rural communities in five states over three summers. "From Sea to Shining Sea" prompts audiences to think about how the United States evolved from a small country to a continental empire during the period of 1790 to 1850. The workshops include presentations by scholars who portray Dolley Madison, John Jacob Astor, Tecumseh, and three figures from the Lewis and Clark expedition (William Clark, Sacagawea, and York).
The OASIS Institute received both planning and implementation grants to develop a reading and discussion series examining the context and impact of the Lewis and Clark expedition. The grants helped the Institute carry out the series through its network of centers located in department stores in 26 cities, as well as provide programs for its membership of 340,000 older adults. NEH support allowed staff to work with a team of eleven scholars from around the country to plan an anthology of essays for the reading and discussion series. Auxiliary components included training and the development of materials for OASIS members to tutor first through fourth graders in 750 schools, docent training organized by the Missouri Historical Society for a traveling exhibition on the expedition, tours in different parts of the country, and ancillary film and book discussion series at individual centers.
The Maine Humanities Council received NEH support to plan and implement a reading and discussion series designed for health care professionals in the workplace setting. The series would foster discussions about texts (fiction, poetry, drama, and nonfiction) that examine from different perspectives the relationship between patients and medical professionals. The NEH grant supported summer training institutes for hospital coordinators for each series of monthly seminars, honoraria for humanities scholars serving as facilitators for the monthly seminars, the cost of books and reading materials, a Web site that serves as a bibliographic and informational resource, and salary for staff. Grant funding enabled the program to be implemented in most hospitals in the state of Maine, initiated in other New England states, and piloted at sites in North Carolina, Illinois, and Texas.
The DoHistory Web site (http://www.dohistory.org), developed by the Film Study Center at Harvard University, invites users to interpret primary historical materials and learn how historians approach that task. Using materials from Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's A Midwife's Tale, a book that documents the life of late-eighteenth-century American midwife Martha Ballard, and video clips from the associated television film, the Web site enables users to enter her world and learn more about daily life in the early days of the Republic.