The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) today announced its latest round of grant awards, with $22.2 million going to 224 nationwide. Of those, 18 awards were made in California, for a total of $3.4 million.
We couldn’t be more grateful to the NEH and to congressional lawmakers for their support of the humanities and the work that we and our hundreds of grantees do to connect millions of people across the state to what it means to be human. We’re glad to see that our country continues to express the shared values of cultural preservation and public engagement with the humanities.
Below, check out the list of the 18 grants awarded in California from the NEH this year, and please join us in thanking the NEH for their support over social media: @NEHgov.
Katahdin Foundation
Berkeley, California
Outright: $396,940 [Media Projects Production]
Project Director: Laura Bialis
Project Title: Vishniac
Project Description: Production of a feature-length documentary about the photographer Roman Vishniac (1897–1990).
Leyla Ozgur Alhassen
University of California, Berkeley
Outright: $6,000 [Summer Stipends]
Project Title: Qur’anic Stories: God, Revelation and the Audience
Project Description: Completing a book analyzing the narrative and rhetoric of the Qur’an to understand the text and its worldview.
University of California, Berkeley
Outright: $151,586 [Humanities Collections and Reference Resources] Project Director: Christina Marino
Project Title: Exploration, Innovation, Regeneration
Project Description: The arrangement and description of the archives of two California women architects/planners, Cathy Simon and Karen Alschuler, of the architectural firm SMWM (Simon Martin-Vegue Winkelstein Moris), whose work impacted California design in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
University of California, Berkeley
Outright: $74,538 [Exhibitions: Planning]
Project Director: Sanjyot Mehendale
Project Title: Lives of the Cosmos: Celestial Visions along the Silk Road
Project Description: Planning of a traveling exhibition on the cave-temples at Dunhuang.
University of California, Berkeley
Outright: $332,762 [Documenting Endangered Languages – Preservation]
Project Director: Andrew Garrett
Project Title: Archiving Legacy Documentation from Southern California and the Southwest: Toward a New Collaborative Model
Project Description: The cataloging, preservation, and creation of online access to documentary materials related mainly to Uto-Aztecan and Yuman languages, assembled by four researchers over several decades. In addition, project staff would explore cocuration of these materials with members of the source communities.
Timothy Henry-Rodriguez
California State University, Fullerton
Outright: $30,000 [Documenting Endangered Languages – Fellowships]
Project Title: Grammar and Lexicon of Purisimeño
Project Description: Research and writing a digital lexicon and grammar of the Native American language Purisimeño, a dormant language of the Chumash family of central coastal California.
Dana Murillo
University of California, San Diego
Outright: $6,000 [Summer Stipends]
Project Title: The Chichimeca Arc: War, Peace, and Resettlement in America’s First Borderlands, 1546–1616
Project Description: Writing one chapter of a book on war and indigenous peoples in central Mexico, 1546–1616.
National University
La Jolla, California
Outright: $100,000 [Dialogues on the Experience of War]
Project Director: Lorna Zukas; Alexander Zukas (co-project director)
Project Title: A Soldier’s Place: Veterans and Civilians Speaking about War
Project Description: A yearlong training and discussion program organized by faculty at National University, in collaboration with the Veteran Center and veteran-student alumni.
Amy Lyford
Occidental College, Los Angeles, California
Outright: $6,000 [Summer Stipends]
Project Title: The Photography of French Surrealist Dora Maar (1907–1997)
Project Description: Research and writing leading to a book on the French photographer Dora Maar.
International Documentary Association
Los Angeles, California
Outright: $313,793 [Media Projects Production]
Project Director: Trisha Ziff Project Title: Return to Oaxacalifornia
Project Description: Production of a 90-minute film that uses the lens of three generations of the same family to explore ideas of what is lost and gained through immigration and assimilation.
Museum Associates
Los Angeles, California
Outright: $400,000 [Exhibitions: Implementation]
Project Director: Diana Magaloni
Project Title: Portable Universe/El Universo en tus Manos: Thought and Splendor of Indigenous Colombia Project Description: Implementation of a 10,000-square-foot traveling exhibition on the art of Colombia from 500 BCE to 1600 CE.
University of California, Los Angeles
Outright: $349,289 [Humanities Collections and Reference Resources]
Project Director: Chon Noriega
Project Title: Religion, Spirituality and Faith in Mexican American Social History 1940s– Present
Project Description: The arrangement, description, and selected digitization of archival collections pertaining to the role of religion in Latino history. Included are nine collections totaling 237 linear feet, among which are 12,000 photographs that would be digitized.
Costanza Dopfel
Saint Mary’s College of California, Moraga, California
Outright: $6,000 [Summer Stipends]
Project Title: Fertile Florence: How a Demographic Disaster Shaped the Italian Renaissance
Project Description: Research for a book on the connection between the Black Death and the origins of the Italian Renaissance.
Jewish Film Institute
San Francisco, California
Outright: $75,000 [Media Projects Development]
Project Director: Yoav Potash
Project Title: Diary from the Ashes
Project Description: Development of a 90-minute documentary film on the diary of Rywka Lipszyc, which records her experience as a Jewish girl in the Lodz ghetto during the Third Reich.
Kitchen Sisters Productions
San Francisco, California
Outright: $100,000 [Media Projects Production]
Project Director: Nikki Silva
Project Title: The Keepers: Radio/Podcast/Social Media Project, Season Two
Project Description: Production of the second season of The Keepers, including eight podcasts for National Public Radio and 52 short stories for the website and social media.
Huntington Library
San Marino, California
Outright: $375,000 [Fellowship Programs at Independent Research Institutions]
Project Director: Steve Hindle
Project Title: Long-Term Research Fellowships at The Huntington Library
Project Description: 24 months of stipend support (3 eight-month fellowships) per year for three years and a contribution to defray costs associated with the selection of fellows.
University of California, Santa Barbara
Outright: $350,000 [Humanities Collections and Reference Resources]
Project Director: Patricia Fumerton Project Title: Early English Broadside Ballads: Local and Global
Project Description: The continued development of the English Broadside Ballad Archive (EBBA), with the addition of 1,178 pre-1701 printed ballad sheets from 101 institutions in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. In addition, the applicant would catalog 923 tune titles and approximately 18,200 woodcut impressions and would enhance access to the entire ballad collection through the project’s new website, EBBA 4.0.
University of California, Santa Barbara
Outright: $349,721 [Humanities Collections and Reference Resources]
Project Director: David Seubert Project Title: The American Discography Project-Victor and Bluebird Records Access Initiative
Project Description: The expansion of the Discography of American Historical Recordings online database through the creation of 14,000 discographic records and the digitization of recordings on 8,500 disc sides produced by the Bluebird and Victor record labels, covering the period from the 1920s to 1948.
Please join us in thanking the NEH for their incredible support for the humanities in California over social media: @NEHgov.
