Skip to main content

Newsroom

NEH & Nebraska

Between 2006 and 2010, institutions and individuals in Nebraska received $6.9 million from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Nebraska Humanities Council for projects that explore the human endeavor and preserve our cultural heritage. Below are some examples.

  • Two hundred thousand pages of historic newspapers published between 1860 and 1922, such as the Omaha Daily Bee and the Red Cloud Chief, are being digitized by the University of Nebraska and the Nebraska State Historical Society. Supported by a $563,000 grant, this work comes as part of the National Digital Newspaper Project, an NEH–Library of Congress partnership.
  • The Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, has received a $150,000 research grant to support an annotated translation of The North American Journals of Prince Maximilian of Wied. In the 1830s Maximilian journeyed up the Missouri River, writing three volumes of notes on native cultures, flora, and fauna.
  • Assisted by a $166,400 education grant, Nebraska Wesleyan University, Lincoln, held two K–12 teacher seminars in 2010 on the topic “Shifting Power on the Plains.” Participants worked with historians, curators, and master teachers at historic Fort Robinson, learning about the Great Plains’ role in the shaping of modern America.
  • Supported by a $300,000 grant, the Walt Whitman Archive, at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, has prepared a scholarly electronic edition of Whitman’s Civil War writings. Hundreds of letters, poems, articles, and notebooks have been edited and published online, many for the first time.
  • Assisted by a $500,000 challenge grant, Nebraska Educational Telecommunications is building a digital humanities endowment to preserve and repurpose its library of television and radio productions for broadcast and online audiences. The collection encompasses fifty-five years of Nebraska-focused programming.
  • By connecting distant places, railroads linked great numbers of people, towns, and markets in a vast process of economic and social change. Researchers at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, working with colleagues at the University of Portsmouth, received a $99,500 grant to integrate data on railroad development in the Great Plains and Northeast in order to visualize this complex historical process.
  • Last year saw Nebraska’s thirteenth annual Capitol Forum on America’s Future, a discussion program in which high school students reflect on domestic and global issues among their peers and members of the state’s congressional delegation. Students from twenty-eight high schools from across the state participated.
  • In 2005, the Nebraska Humanities Council adopted Nebraska’s Changing Population, a multiyear initiative exploring demographic changes shaping the state such as urbanization, suburbanization, the immigrant influx, and the aging of Nebraska’s population.
  • The Nebraska Book Festival, held annually in Lincoln, features readings from local authors’ works, a luncheon honoring the Nebraska Book Award winners, free writing workshops, and panel discussions. The Nebraska Humanities Council and the Nebraska Center for the Book are cosponsors.