In the news this week, two historians have won Balzan Prizes for 2010, and the National History Center’s weekly seminars begin again for Fall 2010. Read articles on the humanities this week: the death of the humanities, education in the digital humanities, and digital humanities start-up grants. We also include two e-book related links this week. First, read the results of a survey from ACLS Humanities E-Book, and second get an e-book for free from the University of Chicago Press. Then, check out NASA images on Flickr, the National Museum of Natural History’s centennial resources, EDsitement’s Constitution Day links, Sean Wilentz’s take on Bob Dylan, and a talk and slideshow on the world’s oldest living organisms.

News

• 4 Academics to Receive Balzan Prizes for 2010
  The International Balzan Prize Foundation has awarded 4 academics, two of which are historians, with Balzan Prizes for 2010, which are worth about $737,000 each. Manfred Brauneck won for The History of Theatre in All Its Aspects and Carlo Ginzburg won for European History, 1400-1700 (including the British Isles).
• Washington History Seminar Returns
  The National History Center’s weekly Washington History Seminars return for Fall 2010. They begin this Monday, September 13, 4 p.m. at the Wilson Center, with Donald A. Ritchie, Historian of the U.S. Senate, giving a talk on “Why a Congress and Not a Parliament?” See the full line-up of seminars online.

Humanities

• Latest Solution to Humanities Crisis: Surrender
  Ph.D. Octopus offers a sensible (and historically based) argument about why recent talk about the imminent death of the humanities seem vastly overstated.
• Opening Up Digital Humanities Education
  Lisa Spiro at Digital Scholarship in the Humanities suggests the Digital Humanities community “experiment with a distributed, mostly online, open certificate program” that could “provide a focused way for the DH community to re-imagine how professional education is conceived, structured and delivered.”
• Summary Findings of NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants (2007 – 2010) (PDF)
  The National Endowment for the Humanities Office of Digital Humanities summarizes the results of their start-up grants over the past four years. History garnered the largest number of grants, even though one historian in the report notes that “real challenge confronting academic historians who do digital history is the fact that there is no tangible professional recognition for this work.”

E-Books

• Handheld E-Book Readers and Scholarship: Report and Reader Survey
  A new survey examined in this white paper from ACLS Humanties E-Book, takes a look at scholarly monographs on handheld devices (like the Kindle, Sony Reader, and iPhone) and finds general satisfaction but suggestions for improvement.  Hat tip.
• Get a free e-book from the University of Chicago Press!
  Each month the University of Chicago Press offers a free e-book. This month’s selection is a facsimile of the 1906 edition of The Chicago Manual of Style.

History

• NASA in The Commons
  NASA has joined The Commons on Flickr, so far posting nearly 200 photos. See images of NASA being built, spacecraft launches,  and important NASA figures.
• Celebrating 100 Years: Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
  The National Museum of Natural History is celebrating its centennial with a section of its site highlight its history. For instance, learn the history of its iconic elephant, the focus of rotunda at the museum’s entrance.
• Constitution Day
  EDSITEment has updated its Constitution Day mini-site with additional resources, including a letter from Chairman Jim Leach along the left side of the main page and resources in Spanish, in preparation for September 17, 2010.
• Sean Wilentz, Bringing It All Back Home
  The Chronicle reports on historian Sean Wilentz’s new book on Bob Dylan.
• Rachel Sussman: The world’s oldest living things
  In a TED Talk from this summer Rachel Sussman presents a slideshow of some of the world’s oldest living things, “from 2,000-year-old brain coral off Tobago’s coast to an ‘underground forest’ in South Africa.”

Contributors: David Darlington, Debbie Ann Doyle, Elisabeth Grant, and Robert B. Townsend

This post first appeared on AHA Today.