Fellowships And So Much More: Classics and NEH
by Helen Cullyer, Executive Director (Society for Classical Studies)
Every year the SCS awards two year-long fellowships, the Pearson and TLL. Current fellows Elizabeth Ridgeway (Pearson) and Charles McNamara (TLL) are now finishing up their fellowship years, while next year's award recipients gear up for a year of study and research in Europe. Peggy Xu, recipient of the Pearson Fellowship, will be studying for a year at the University of Cambridge, and Elizabeth Palazzalo will start a year of lexicographical research at the TLL Institute in Munich. These two fellowships provide opportunities for US-trained classicists to expand their intellectual horizons abroad. However, while both awards receive some limited funding from the SCS Annual Fund, their primary funding sources are very different. The Pearson Fellowship is supported by income from a generous bequest by Lionel Pearson. The NEH has funded the TLL Fellowship since 1984. The two fellowships, taken together, provide an excellent example of how US funding for the humanities flows from both public agencies and private philanthropy, with both of these sources complementing and enhancing the other.
The field of Classics has benefited enormously from the generosity of individuals and from grants from foundations such as The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Packard Humanities Institute. However, without the NEH, the funding landscape for Classics would look very different. The NEH is the only funding agency in the US that funds the humanities comprehensively across all 50 states and addresses the needs of K-12 educators, scholars in higher education, and the public. Numerous NEH summer institutes have provided opportunities for K-12 teachers to engage, learn, and collaborate with university and college faculty on classical languages, literatures, and cultures. Since the late 1960s, the NEH has provided direct support for 266 individual research projects, via fellowships and summer stipends, in classical literature and history, and for hundreds of other projects, many of them collaborative and inter-disciplinary, on the ancient world. Grant money from the NEH, together with private funding and institutional support, has been essential for the development of digital resources and projects that we now all take for granted, such as the Perseus Digital Library, Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, Database of Classical Bibliography, and Pleiades. NEH Challenge Grants have enabled organizations to leverage matching funds from individuals and foundations in order to support large-scale projects. Indeed, SCS itself has been the beneficiary of two NEH challenge grants, one in the 1980s and one in 2005. Finally, Bro Adams, who has recently stepped down as NEH Chairman, was responsible for creating a number of new funding initiatives that are bringing the power and relevance of classical literature and drama to a wide audience. You can read, for example, about The Aquila Theatre’s NEH-funded work involving war veterans here in this newsletter.
We live in tumultuous times. Every day, we hear in the news of events and revelations that demand our attention. It is easy to become caught up in the present moment and there are many, many issues other than humanities funding to which engaged citizens should attend. However, as teachers and scholars of the ancient world, we are all involved in a never-ending dialogue between the present and the past. The NEH remains a crucial public agency that supports our understanding of the past and its relevance. Imagine life without the NEH. It would be not only financially, but also intellectually and emotionally, poorer.
More June, 2017 Newsletter Content
For Casey Dué's piece about the Homer Multitext Project, read her article here.
For Kristina Killgrove's article on the funding complexities in Classical Bioarchaeology, go here.
For Peter Meineck's call for strong NEH funding and his experience with Aquilla Theatre, follow this link.
For a list of resources you can use to learn more about proposed NEH funding cuts and how to get involved, check out this page.
Photo Credits for June, 2017 Newsletter
- “I’m going to change”
by frankieleon
licensed under CC BY 2.0
- “166v-167r_Arch24v_Heiberg_visible_stitch”
by Ryan Baumann
Licensed under CC BY 2.0
- “Catacombs Under Paris”
by Kristina Killgrove
used with permission
- “North Carolina Veterans Memorial Pavillion”
by Donald Lee Pardue
licensed under CC BY 2.0
- “United States”
by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
licensed under CC BY 2.0
