On January 14, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced $22.6 million in grants for humanities projects across the United States. The grants will fund a variety of projects that improve humanities instruction, support faculty research, and expand opportunities for the public to engage with the humanities. Many of the grantees are faculty at AAU institutions.
For example, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Professor Hannah Gill will use the funding to interview Latino community health workers in North Carolina about their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Gill has been collecting oral histories for a public history initiative documenting Latin American heritage in North Carolina.
The NEH will also support a three-year project at the University of California, Santa Cruz to develop “humanities courses and modules that engage critically with artificial intelligence.” The NEH has previously supported a project at UCSC that led to the creation of a humanities certificate program for engineering students at the university.
Another project at the University of Arizona will expand education and training in archival collection and management through a paid internship program at the university’s Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. The initiative will also engage interns and other locals interested in preservation work through workshops on preserving water-damaged materials.
These are just a few AAU institutions that will receive NEH support to advance cultural preservation, enhance humanities instruction, and make humanities work more accessible. A full list of grant awards and offers can be found here.
Marcelo Jauregui-Volpe is editorial and communications assistant at AAU.