The new Division of General Programs was created by merging the former divisions of Special Programs and Public Programs to bring Endowment grants intended for general audiences (with the exception of State Programs) within the purview of one administrative unit.
This consolidation of formerly separate programs is intended to make clear the purpose of the Endowment’s programs for general audiences: to support projects that bring these audiences into contact with the most significant works, ideas, and events in the long tradition of the humanities and with the best in new scholarship in the humanities.
A widespread confusion regarding the term “humanities,” reflected in proposals we have received 0ver the years, suggested to us the need for clarifying the intellectual focus of the programs for general audiences. Many applications, for example, sought funds to achieve “humanitarian” or “humane” goals. But the NEH is not a social services administration. Its aim is not to support general community activities or even to preserve waning cultural practices.
In order to dispel this confusion we are rewriting guidelines for the three programs that constitute the Division of General Programs: Media; Museums and Historical Organizations; and Special Projects. Rather than asking applicants for a statement of “humanities content,” a phrase open to much misunderstanding, we will seek to judge that content by the way in which a proposal addresses itself to one of the following three goals: the illumination of cultural works: the articulation of ideas, persons, and historical events; or the description of the methods and work that constitute the disciplines of the humanities. In all cases we will be looking especially for proposals that deal with significant and—to the degree it is possible—timeless subjects. For it is the Endowment’s belief that we should present the most important features of humanities learning to general audiences before attempting to inform them of the latest refinements and interests of professional scholars, however useful and even necessary these may be to the advancement of knowledge. We are mindful that we live in an age when nonacademics are seldom encouraged to avail themselves of the riches of great literature and philosophy or to be come aware of the most significant historical events and ideas that have shaped the Western and non-Western traditions. It is precisely to generate such opportunities and to offer such encouragement that the Division of General Programs exist.
The various fields within the discipline of history have long held a significant place in our activities. Most recently, we have seen more proposals in local and social history, and fewer in political, diplomatic, national, and world history. In some respects this trend is due to an increased public interest in the history of particular social and economic groups and geographical areas of the country. And, as Americans become more fully aware of the fact that they did not become Americans without having been something else first, they become more and more interested in the customs of their ancestors and in the history of their transformation. We believe that the increased curiosity of people about their own origins and the origins of their communities provides excellent opportunities to foster an understanding of the more consequential events in the course of history, events that provide the context necessary to appreciate fully who we have been, who we are and, in Lincoln’s phrase, “‘whither we are tending.” Hence we especially encourage proposals that seek to provide general audiences with an appreciation of the most significant, enduring, and consequential events in history, particularly Western and American regional and national history. In the case of proposals dealing with local historical events, we ask that the applicant demonstrate the larger significance of the particulars to be treated.
Through its three grant-making programs, the division supports projects that range over all the disciplines of the humanities. It will be obvious from the examples that follow, however, that historians can play significant roles even in projects that do not have a historical focus.
In our Media Program scholars collaborate with film and radio professionals to produce television programming for national audiences and radio programming for regional and national audiences. In recent years the Media Program has supported a radio series of eight one-hour dramatizations of Homer’s Odyssey, while our special initiative in Children’s Media is supporting “Booker,” a dramatized documentary about two years in the life of the young Booker T. Washington. In this drama, set during the period of the close of the Civil War and the start of the Reconstruction era, Booker struggles to learn how to read. Medieval scholars have been heavily involved in a sixty-minute television program based on David Macaulay’s book, Castle, the story of the building and operation of a medieval castle in Wales. The film uses an imaginary but historically representative castle, Aberwyvern, to provide a historical perspective of the society of thirteenth-century Wales and England.
Among the division’s prime tools for bringing the humanities to the public are interpretive exhibitions mounted by museums and historical organizations. Endowment-supported exhibits do more than simply display art or artifacts; they demonstrate the significance of these works for the humanities tradition and present scholarship to the public in a lucid and concrete way. Recent grants from the Museums and Historical Organizations Program have supported seminars on the “Interpretation of History by Historical Societies and Museums,” conducted by the American Association for State and Local History; a program enabling thousands of people to learn more about the role of the literary masterpiece The Tale of Genji in Japanese culture: a traveling exhibition of Judaic treasures from the Czechoslovak state collections representative in Moravia and Bohemia; a catalog to accompany a traveling exhibition dealing with Louis XIV and his world both within France and outside in the Louisiana territory; and the highly acclaimed traveling exhibit “El Greco of Toledo,” which offered a new interpretation of El Greco’s art based on recent research on the cultural context in which it flourished, the center of the Spanish Church and moving force of the Counter Reformation.
The Special Projects Program provides support for a variety of public education projects involving scholars and the: community through two grantmaking categories, Program Development and Youth Programs. Program development has used lecture series, seminars, reading groups, roundtable discussions, traveling exhibits, and other means to deepen public appreciation of the humanities.
Recently a midwestern university received a grant for a series or public programs devoted to the Renaissance. The project will focus on the invention of printing and the resulting transformation of European life. The program also awarded a major grant to support a series of lectures and seminars on religious freedom and the first amendment as part of our special initiative for the commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the US Constitution.
Through Youth Projects the Endowment offers young people a chance to learn the methods of the humanities by participating in projects with humanities scholars and youth professionals. Last year the program funded many projects emphasizing writing skills and the study of history, including a program on “Moby-Dick and the Tools of Whaling,” conducted by the Old Dartmouth Historical Society. The society used the collection at its whaling museum to help high school students prepare a handbook explaining the tools and processes of the mid-nineteenth-century whaling industry, which play so large a role in Moby-Dick.
The Endowment has just initiated a new grant-making effort entitled the Younger Scholars Program. Funds are offered to outstanding students (up to the age of twenty-one) to spend a summer working in conjunction with a humanities scholar on a research project culminating in a written paper. We have already received over three hundred applications in this promising new program, many of them in the field of American history.
These are but a few examples of the wide range of proposals funded in the Division of General Programs. If you have a humanities project for general audiences in mind please give our staff a call or send us a letter outlining your idea. We would be happy to assist you in any way we can.
Jeffrey D. Wallin is the director of the Division of General Programs at the National Endowment of the Humanities.
