On December 1, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced $21 million in grants for 215 humanities projects.

This funding will support a wide variety of projects, including research fellowships and awards for scholars, the preservation of humanities collections at smaller institutions, traveling exhibitions, and humanities initiatives at historically black colleges, institutions with high Hispanic enrollment, and tribal colleges and universities. The grants awarded will also support training for museum and archive staff to preserve and enhance access to their collections, while NEH Challenge Grants provide support for long-term humanities activities.

As part of the agency’s Bridging Cultures initiative — which encourages projects that explore the ways in which cultures from around the globe, as well as the myriad subcultures within America’s borders, have influenced American society— NEH announced awards in three special grant programs: Bridging Cultures Through Film, Bridging Cultures at Community Colleges, and Bridging Cultures Implementation Grants for Public Programs. Projects receiving funding through these programs include the production of a film on the experiences of the Cambodian actor Haing Ngor during the Cambodian genocide and his life in America afterwards, a two-year professional and curriculum development project for faculty and administrators from eighteen community colleges to improve introductory humanities courses at two-year institutions, and the implementation of library programming and a companion website on the poetry of the Muslim world.

Also among the grants announced are a research fellowship to examine reading habits in the antebellum South and their relationship to slavery and an emerging market economy, and a challenge grant to provide tuition-free introductory college level courses in American history, literature, and writing to low income students in Massachusetts. Funding will also support workshops for cultural heritage conservators on preventative conservation methods and the conservation of digital prints, and provide climate monitoring equipment to protect a collection of 1,000 artifacts documenting the lives of Chinese immigrants in Lewiston, Idaho, in the late 19th century.

This award cycle, institutions and independent scholars in 43 states and the District of Columbia will receive NEH support. Complete state-by-state listings of grants are available here (45-page PDF).