The following projects received funding during 2008 as a part of the We the People initiative.

CHALLENGE GRANTS

Regular Challenge Grants

The Byrne-Reed House: The New Headquarters of Texas
Humanities Texas, Austin, TX

To restore a functional new home for the humanities in the center of Texas's capital city.

The Center for the History and New Media
George Mason University, Fairfax, VA

Endowment for partial salaries for a digital historian, a web designer, a computer programmer, two graduate research assistants, as well as software and equipment acquisitions.

Endow American History Programs of the USC-Huntington Institutes
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA

Endowment for seminar programs, graduate stipends, post-doctoral fellowships, and a partnership program with William and Mary Quarterly that joins the University of Southern California and the Huntington Library through two institutes:  the Early Modern Studies Institute and the Institute on California and the West.

The Interpretation and Preservation of American Material Culture:  Enriching Graduate Education and Promoting Public Engagement
University of Delaware, Newark, DE

Endowment for graduate student summer research stipends, public engagement institutes, and symposia in the study of American material culture.

EDUCATION PROGRAMS

Humanities Initiatives for Faculty: Historically Black Colleges and Universities

Local History in a Global Context: Petersburg's African American History in the Context of the Atlantic World
Virginia State University, Petersburg, VA

A one-year project to create a research center, a website, and a graduate history curriculum on the history of Petersburg, Virginia's African American community.

Humanities Initiatives for Faculty: Hispanic Serving Institutions

Religion, Identity, and Civil Society in the Era of Globalization
California State Los Angeles University Auxiliary Services, Inc.

A faculty workshop series on religious pluralism in Los Angeles, leading to the eventual creation of a religious studies program at California State University, Los Angeles.

Water and Work: The Ecology of Downtown Brooklyn
CUNY Research Foundation, John Jay College, New York, NY

A one-year seminar series for sixteen faculty members, along with a public symposium, on the natural and cultural history of Brooklyn's waterfront.

Humanities Initiatives for Faculty: Tribal Colleges and Universities

Fort Peck Community College, Indian Education for All
Fort Peck Community College, Poplar, MT

A series of professional development activities for Montana school teachers on the history and culture of the Nakona and Dakota people.

PRESEVEATION AND ACCESS

Preservation Assistance Grants

American Paintings Conservation Assessment
Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC

A conservation assessment of the museum's American paintings, which include works by Thomas Sully, Gilbert Stuart, Thomas Cole, George Bellows, and Robert Henri.  The museum has recently made American art one of its six primary collecting priorities and has hired a full-time curator for this collection.

Archives Rehousing Plan
Antiquarian and Landmarks Society, Inc., Hartford, CT

To support hiring a consultant to develop a plan to rehouse and preserve the society's collections of furniture, ceramics, textiles, artworks, photographs, and archives related to the 18th- and 19th-century history of Hartford, Connecticut and surrounding areas.

Barnstable Historical Society Preservation Assessment
Barnstable Historical Society, Barnstable, MA

A general preservation assessment of Barnstable Historical Society's manuscript collections, including documentation of early American  glassmaking, New England's cranberry and fishing industries, and rare Native American land sale documents.  These collections reflect the history of one of the earliest established communities in colonial America.

Collections Assessment of the Edgar Allan Poe Museum Collections
Poe Foundation, Inc., Richmond, VA

A general preservation assessment and purchase of environmental monitoring equipment for the preservation of correspondence, books, artifacts, and other materials related to the life of American poet Edgar Allen Poe.

Collections Preservation Project
Little Compton Historical Society, Little Compton, RI

Purchase of storage furniture and preservation supplies to rehouse artifacts, textiles, books, manuscripts, and other materials that document the history of Rhode Island from the 1700s to the 20th century.

Conservation Assessment of the Arnold Family Business Papers
Brown University, Providence, RI

To support hiring a consultant to develop a treatment plan for a collection of business records from the Arnold family, a prominent  Rhode Island merchant family, active in nearly every aspect of economic life in New England. 

Conservation Consultation of Image Collection
University of Montana, Missoula, MT

To hire a photographic preservation consultant to assess a collection of 50,000 historic images dating from 1860 to the 1980s and housed in the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library at The University of Montana-Missoula.  The collection focuses on people, places, and events in western Montana.

Conservation Survey of Paintings and Miniatures
Tudor Place Foundation, Inc., Washington, DC

A conservation assessment of paintings and miniatures in order to identify treatment priorities and recommendations for rehousing.  Tudor Place was the home of Thomas Peter and Martha Parke Custis Peter, the granddaughter of Martha Washington, and was occupied by six generations of one family until 1983.  The works of art to be surveyed include many early portraits, such as a 1794 miniature in watercolor on ivory of George Washington, which was painted by Walter Robinson at the request of Martha Custis Peter upon her engagement.

Conserve and Preserve Materials of the Genealogy Collection
Old Lyme-Phoebe Griffin Noyes Library Association, Old Lyme, CT

A general preservation survey of library and archival materials and training for staff in the care and handling of collections, which consist of family histories, genealogies, and church and cemetery records documenting the history of Connecticut and New England.

Development of Statewide Disaster Preparedness and Recovery
Delaware Public Archives and Delaware Division of Libraries

The creation of a state-wide consortium for disaster preparedness and response. 

Environmental Monitoring of Collections
SUNY Research Foundation, Albany, NY

Purchase of environmental monitoring equipment for the State University of New York, Fredonia Archives and Special Collections of more than 1,600 linear feet of institutional archives and manuscript collections documenting the history of the university, the Seneca Nation, and western New York State.

Environmental Monitoring Equipment for the General Lew Wallace Study and Museum
General Lew Wallace Study and Museum, Crawfordsville, IN

Purchase of equipment to monitor environmental conditions at the General Lew Wallace Study and Museum, a National Historic Landmark site. The museum's collections of literary works, memorabilia, historical objects, and archival materials document the life of General Lew Wallace (1827-1905), the author of "Ben-Hur," and a major general in the Union army, a governor of the New Mexico Territory, and a minister to Turkey.

Frontier Culture Museum Preservation Assessment of Humanities Collections
American Frontier Culture Foundation, Inc., Staunton, VA

A preservation assessment of the Frontier Culture Museum's collection of artifacts and archival materials that are used at the living history museum to explore the contributions of Indian, French, German, English, Irish, and African settlers to life in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

Library Collection Preservation Project
Historical Society of Frankford, Philadelphia, PA

To support purchase of archival storage supplies and equipment to preserve a collection of personal papers, manuscripts, legal records, maps and deeds, photographs, government and military records, works of art on paper, books, and newspapers documenting the history of Philadelphia and the surrounding area.

Museum Preservation Assistance Project
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, NM

To support hiring a photographic consultant to assess the preservation needs of nearly two thousand photographs dating from 1910 to the mid-1980s that were created by O'Keeffe or that document aspects of her work.

Native American Clothing and Textiles:  A Rehousing Project
Eiteljorg Museum of American Indian and Western Art, Indianapolis, IN

Purchase of storage furniture to rehouse dresses, leggings, Ghost Dance shirts, and other objects related to 19th-century Plains Indian history.

Paris Gibson Square Collection Storage
Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art, Great Falls, MT

To support a preservation assessment of the museum's collections, consisting primarily of American Primitive wood sculptures and modern and contemporary art of the Northwest and Native American art of the Northwest and the Plains.  Purchase of shelving, supplies, and environmental monitoring equipment would improve storage conditions for the collections.

Consultation with a conservator to plan for the storage of collections at the Sewall-Belmont House and Museum, the headquarters of the historic National Women's Party (NWP) and the home of NWP's founder, Alice Paul. The collections document the history of women's suffrage and equal rights campaigns from 1913 to the 1970s and include archival records, furniture, fine and decorative arts, textiles, and memorabilia.

Preservation Assessment and Workshop
Mountain Home Public Library, Mountain Home, ID

Support for a preservation assessment and training for staff of the Mountain Home Historical Museum, which collects and maintains agricultural, mining, and ranching artifacts as well as maps and county records that document the history of Idaho and the West.

Preservation Survey of National Book Awards Archives
National Book Foundation, New York, NY

A general preservation assessment of the Foundation's archives documenting the founding and development of the Foundation and its National Book Awards.  The collection includes the original letters of literary and political figures, including W.H. Auden, Wallace Stevens, Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, Saul Bellow, Susan Sontag, and Dwight Eisenhower.

Preserving the Heritage of Southeast Arkansas
University of Arkansas, Monticello, AR

Purchase of archival preservation supplies and a training workshop for the staff of the University's archives and special collections. The collection includes 603 linear feet of books and periodicals and 110 linear feet of newspaper materials in print and microfilm documenting the history of Southeast Arkansas, the University of Arkansas at Monticello, and the Ashley, Drew and Northern Railroads.

Preserving History:  An Environmental Assessment
The Greater Southwest Historical Museum, Ardmore, OK

A general preservation needs assessment of a museum holding furniture, tools, and other artifacts, archaeological materials, textiles,  books, and archives related to the history and cultures of Oklahoma and the Southwest from the early 1700s to the 20th century.

Preserving Orphan Train History
National Orphan Train Complex, Inc., Concordia, KS

Purchase of storage furniture and preservation supplies to rehouse correspondence, vital records, photographs, books, and other materials that document the history of the Orphan Train Movement in the United States, 1854 to 1930.

Preserving Woodrow Wilson Papers
Woodrow Wilson Presidential Libraries, Staunton, VA

A preservation assessment of archival materials relating to the life and presidency of Woodrow Wilson, including the papers of President Wilson’s personal physician and confidante, documents and photographs from Wilson’s military driver during battlefield tours, and correspondence from the family of Wilson’s first wife.  The purchase of archival supplies will be used to rehouse documents and photographs.

Purchase of Storage Furniture for 39 Large Three-Dimensional Objects
Heritage Museum and Gardens, Sandwich, MA

Purchase of storage cabinets and shelving for large objects in the institution's American history collection, including carousel figures, carved birds, ship models, weathervanes, furniture, and tools.

Quincy University Rare Materials Assessment
Quincy University, Quincy, IL

A preservation assessment of rare book and archival collections, including a local history collection of documents and photographs on Quincy, Illinois, during the Civil War and steamboat eras; an early collection of African American folklore; and a collection of books, manuscripts, and letters on 17th- and 18th-century Franciscan missionary work in Mexico and the American Southwest.

Rehousing the Tenement Museum’s Archival Collections
Lower East Side Tenement Museum, New York, NY

Purchase of storage furniture and preservation supplies to rehouse manuscripts, archives, photographs, and audio and video materials that illustrate life in Lower East Side, New York, tenement houses during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Special Collections and Archives Preservation Assessment
University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, WI

A general preservation assessment of a collection of manuscripts, county and municipal records, and business archives documenting the history, culture, social life and industry in the Chippewa Valley region.

Special Collections Preservation
James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA

The purchase of archival supplies to rehouse manuscript collections documenting the history and culture of Augusta, Page, Rockingham, and Shenandoah Counties in Virginia.  The collections, which date from the late 18th century to the present, include correspondence, diaries, deeds, wills, indentures, and records from businesses in the Shenandoah Valley.  Purchase of a media storage cabinet will help to stabilize items in at-risk formats, such as microfilm and magnetic materials.

Special Collections Preservation Assessment
Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA

A preservation assessment of the library's special collections, which include rare books, early 20th-century sheet music, materials on the Pennsylvania Germans, and maps of Pennsylvania and the Lehigh Valley.

Topical Collections Preservation Project
Oregon Historical Society, Portland, OR

Purchase of preservation supplies to rehouse 150 linear feet of archival collections, including business records, military records,  ethnographic materials, correspondence, diaries, scrapbooks, playbills, posters, and advertising materials dating from mid 1800s to the present, reflecting the history and culture of Oregon and the greater Pacific Northwest.

PUBLIC PROGRAMS

Libraries Implementation

Love of Country Leads (Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibitions)
Abraham Lincoln Foundation, Philadelphia, PA

To support implementation of a traveling panel exhibition, related public programming, training, and companion digital and curricular materials about the life of Abraham Lincoln and his contributions to the leadership of the United States.

Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibitions

Abraham Lincoln:  A Man of His Time, A Man for All Times, a Traveling Exhibition
Gilder Lehman Institute of American History, New York, NY

Production of a six-section panel exhibition, Abraham Lincoln: A Man of His Time, A Man for All Times, to travel to 40 libraries and be accessible online along with an exhibition brochure, a multimedia resource kit and video, and programming for the public at both the local and national level.

Abraham Lincoln:  Self-Made in America Traveling Exhibition Program
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Libray and Museum Foundation

Implementation of a panel exhibition about the life and times of Abraham Lincoln traveling to 40 sites, with a companion publication, curricular materials, summer workshops serving 200 teachers, and reading and film discussion programs for the public.

Media TV Production

Twentieth-Century Presidents:  A Multi-Platform Initiative from the American Experience
WGBH Educational Foundation, Boston, MA

To support the distribution, onto a broad range of media platforms, of the television biographies of seven twentieth-century presidents-Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George Herbert Walker Bush-who defined the modern American presidency.

NEH on the Road 

Going Places
Traveling exhibition exploring the culture, evolution, and eventual demise of horse-drawn transportation, from the early nineteenth century, through the industrial revolution, and into the 1900s and the dawn of the automobile age.  Host sites funded:

El Paso Museum of History, El Paso, TX
Texas A&M University, Kingsville, TX

Farm Life: A Century of Change for Farm Families and Their Neighbors
 Traveling exhibition exploring how political, economic, and cultural roots influence families today, both on and off the farm, with a focus on farming’s social and cultural context.  Host sites funded:

Sedalia Area Chamber of Commerce, Sedalia, MO

Wrapped in Pride: Ghanaian Kente and African American Identity

Traveling exhibition that bridges two continents, exploring the art and symbolism of kente cloth in the cultures of Africa and its expression of identity in African American communities.  Host sites funded:

Texarkana Regional Arts and Humanities Council, Texarkana, TX

RESEARCH GRANTS

Digital Humanities Fellowships

Herman Melville’s Marginalia Online
St. Joseph’s University, Philadelphia, PA

Development of a website with accurate, fully annotated transcriptions of Melville's markings and commentary in the extant books he collected throughout his career.  This project makes it possible for scholars to engage in a comparative analysis of Melville's markings in a variety of texts relevant to the manuscript archive and to the novels and poetry for which there are no manuscript records.

An Interactive Digital Collection on Early Movie Culture in the American South
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC

An online, interactive, digital collection that will illuminate cultural and social life in the early 20th-century urban South by documenting the role of movies and moviegoing in communities across North Carolina over the first three decades of the century. 

Faculty Research Awards

The Struggle Over School Desegregation in Prince Edward County, Virginia, 1959-1964
Lehman College Library, The Bronx, NY

Examination of the struggle over school desegregation in Prince Edward County, Virginia.  

Fellowships for College Teachers and Independent Scholars

American Media Intellectuals in the Public Sphere, 1993-2002
Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA

To complete a book comparing factual news reporting, media opinion and commentary in the contemporary United States.  Sources include the New York Times, USA Today, Face the Nation (CBS News), Crossfire (CNN), The Lehrer News Hour (PBS) and Hannity & Colmes (Fox News).

Amy Lowell, American Poet, 1874-1925:  A Biography
CUNY Research Foundation, Bernard Baruch College, New York, NY

Biography of Amy Lowell exploring crucial aspects of her life and work, not previously documented.  The book will explore Lowell's landmark contribution to literary biography in her monumental two-volume biography of John Keats. 

Religion and African American Theatre, 1858-1945
Rockhurst University, Kansas City, MO

Completion of a book that will be a scholarly examination of the way in which religious ideology was reflected in plays written by African Americans through WWII. 

Skepticism and American Faith from the Revolution to the Civil War
College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA

Completion of a book that will examine the personal, social, and political dimensions of the relation between religious skepticism and faith in the United States from the 1770s through the 1860s. 

Fellowships for University Teachers

American Constitutional Failure and Success
University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN

A book that will show that the capacity of institutions and political leaders to anticipate and provide for constitutional failure is central to the rational pursuit of constitutional ends and to constitutionalism as an ideology.

The Atlantic Monthly and the “American Idea”
University of Delaware, Newark, DE

A cultural and biographical research project on the workings of The Atlantic Monthly, the range of its subscribers, and its role in the making of American culture.

Civic Monuments of the Civil War and the Reconstruction of American Memory
University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC

The writing and completion of a book about the civic monuments to the U.S. Civil War dedicated from the 1860s into the 1920s.  The work focuses on memorials located in communities across the North and South,

The Influence of the Scottish Enlightenment on American Founders
Texas A&M University, College Station, TX

Examination of the influence of Samuel Davies, Presbyterian itinerant, upon Patrick Henry's oratory and political thought that developed in colonial Virginia after the Great Awakening.

Langston Hughes’s Middle Way
Loyola University, Chicago, IL

Completion of a book manuscript on the African-American poet Langston Hughes.

The Public Library in the Life of the American People, 1850-2000
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL

A comprehensive history of the American public library since 1850 that will take a "library in the life of the user" perspective.  This study will harness newer humanities scholarship on the public sphere and the social nature of reading to demonstrate multiple roles these ubiquitous institutions have played (and continued to play) in their host communities.

A Social History of Civil War Slave Refugee Camps
SUNY Research Foundation, Albany, NY

A book-length social history of slave flight during the Civil War years, focusing on the lives of specific people and their families during the first moments of their transition from slavery to freedom.