NDSU associate professor Anne Blankenship (history, philosophy and religious studies), NDSU professor Amy Gore (English), and NDSU government information librarian Susanne Caro (NDSU libraries) have received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The NDSU scholars' projects are among 225 humanities projects across the country funded through a $24 million investment from the NEH.

Gore and Blankenship’s awards are in the Summer Stipends category which supports humanities writing. Their projects are among more than ninety that are funded by the program this year.

Gore received $6,000 for her project entitled “Material Matters: Book and Bodies in Indigenous Literary History, 1772– 1936.” She plans to use the funding to complete her manuscript. Blankenship also received $6,000 for her project entitled “Religion, Race, and Immigration: How American Jews, Catholics, and Protestants Faced Mass Immigration, 1882–1924.” She plans to use the funding to complete chapters in her manuscript.

Caro’s grant was in the Exhibitions: Planning” category, which supports the creation of media, exhibitions, and public programs that bring the insights of the humanities to wide audiences. She received $16,421 for a project to support a traveling exhibition about natural disasters entitled “Sharing Stories of Community Resilience to Disasters: Designing a New Model for Collaborative Traveling Exhibits.”

Caro commented, “I’m hoping this model of incorporating local narratives will change the long-term design of traveling exhibits to present a wider range of experiences."

“NEH is proud to support these 225 new projects, which embody excellence, intellectual rigor, and a dedication to the pursuit of knowledge, even as our nation and the humanities community continue to face the challenges of the pandemic,” said NEH Acting Chairman Adam Wolfson. “We look forward to the contributions these projects will make to our understanding of ourselves and our society through exemplary humanities research, publications, documentary films, exhibitions, and undergraduate programs.”

The goal of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) humanities grants is to support a range of humanities projects across 12 categories. The three NDSU grants were the only ones awarded in North Dakota.

The National Endowment for the Humanities was created in 1965 as an independent federal agency that supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation.