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" m OX ID)~ BO N/F 322 wx ’ b4e ‘ es Regional Studies / . Teaching and Lifelong Learning j é ee: a January 2001 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES WASHINGTON. D.C. 20506 OFFICE OF THE CHAIRMAN Dear Friends of NEH, As the National Endowment for the Humanities celebrates its thirty-fifth anniversary, we take this opportunity both to assess our past and to plan for our future. NEH is a national treasure whose resources will be increasingly important to our nation in the twenty-first century. These four working papers offer an exciting window on NEH by profiling our support for humanities projects in the fields of “Humanities, Science, and Technology,” “International Programs,” “Regionalism,” and “Teaching and Lifelong Learning.” Each paper looks at patterns of support for earlier projects and also suggests areas that deserve support in the coming years. Together they allow us to look with pride at our own history and to plan for the future as we shape significant partnerships with Congress, the White House, and the American people. These working papers demonstrate how NEH has strengthened the humanities for America in profound ways. Our grants have supported enriched classroom teaching, Pulitzer Prize-winning books, acclaimed television and radio programs, popular. museum exhibitions, and precious library and museum collections. Without NEH, our nation would be bereft of resources that enrich our daily lives, resources that help us participate as citizens of the twenty-first century. As you read these papers, know that they are the Endowment’s pledge that we will continue to strengthen the humanities for every family, community, and institution in America. Sincerely, William R. Ferris INTRODUCTION 1 REPORT OF THE REGIONAL STUDIES WORKING GROUP National Endowment for the Humanities November 1999 NEH, Regionalism, and the Humanities 11 Thinking Regionally 11 Regionalism and the Humanities 13 NEH Support for Regional Study 16 Overview 16 Expressions of America 21 Places to Visit 22 Roads and Rivers 23 Mapping Differences 23 Recalling the Past 24 Regional Initiatives 25 Regional Humanities Centers 26 My History Is America’s History 28 Conclusion 30 Members of the Working Group 31 Endnotes 32 REPORT OF THE TEACHING AND LIFELONG LEARNING WORKING GROUP National Endowment for the Humanities November 1999 (Revised July 2000) Introduction 33 Part |: Trends and Accomplishments of the National Endowment for the Humanities in Teaching and Lifelong Learning (1965-99) 35 Formal Education 35 General Trends and Patterns 35 Accomplishments in Elementary, Secondary, and Higher Education 36 Informal Education/Lifelong Learning 44 General Trends and Patterns 45 Accomplishments 47 Museums and Historical Organizations 47 Libraries and Archives 48 Media—Television and Radio 49 Special Projects 51 Part ll: Teaching and Lifelong Learning in the Humanities in the United States at the End of the Twentieth Century 54 Formal Education 54 Lifelong Learning 66 Appendices: Recommended Projects 76 1. After-School Programs: Three Models 76 2. Families Reading and Thinking Together 80 3. Traveling Exhibitions for Small- and Medium-Sized Museums 81 4. Digital Television and the Humanities 82 5. Radio Programming and Regional Studies: Opportunities for Teaching and Lifelong Learning 84 6. Advisory Group Meetings | 85 Members of the Working Group 87 Endnotes 88 — //I — NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES REPORT OF THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING GROUP National Endowment for the Humanities / November 1999 The First Thirty-five Years: A Survey of NEH Support for Research, Education, and Public Programs about Other Cultures Introduction 89 Individual and Collaborative Research 91 Research Resources 99 Serving the Needs of Teachers 105 Programs for the Public 110 The Importance of International Perspectives in 2000 115 Planning for the Future: Recommendations 119 Enhancing Educational Programs for Academic and Public Audiences 119 Encouraging International Research and Collaboration 123 Restorations 125 Potential Partnerships 130 Other 131 Members of the International Working Group 133 Endnotes REPORT OF THE HUMANITIES, SCIENCE, AND TECHNOLOGY WORKING GROUP National Endowment for the Humanities / May 2000 NEH’s Support for Humanities, Science, and Technology: Accomplishments and Future Prospects 139 Introduction 139 NEH, the Humanities, and the Sciences 140 The Impact of the Computer 141 The Structure of the Report 143 Part I: NEH and Humanities, Science, and Technology 145 Scholarly Research in Humanities, Science, and Technology 145 Science and Humanities Education 147 State Humanities Councils: "Nature, Technology and Human Understanding” 148 Humanities, Science, and Technology Projects for Public Audiences 149 Part Il: NEH and Digital Technology 151 NEH’s Support for Digital Humanities Projects 153 Access to Humanities Resources and Scholarship 153 Technology and Humanities Education 156 Lifelong Learning in the Digital Age 159 Strengthening Cultural and Educational Institutions 162 NEH's Internal Use of Technology 162 Trends and Patterns in NEH-Supported Digital Projects 163 Projects That Create New Approaches to Studying the Humanities 165 Projects That Approach Digital Technology as a Subject 167 Projects That Develop Standards and Best Practices 168 Other Important Trends and Issues 169 Part Ill: Recommendations of the HST Working Group 171 Recommendations: NEH and Humanities, Science and Technology Projects 171 Recommendations: NEH and Digital Humanities Projects 177 Conclusion: Opportunities for Partnerships 181 Members of the Working Group 183 NEH TIMELINE / 184 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES WORKING GROUP PAPERS INTRODUCTION With the coming of the new century, we at the National Endowment for the Humanities have resolved to take stock of where we have been during the thirty- five-year existence of this institution, and of what that history implies for our present condition and for our vision of the future. Institutional planning is a disciplined pro- jection into the future. It necessarily proceeds from a foundation of institutional memory. For more than a year, four working groups, each comprising approximately twelve members of the Endowment’s professional staff, have been meeting regularly to document the history of our achievements across four key dimensions of the NEH mission: regional studies; teaching and lifelong learning; international studies; and the conjunction of humanities, science, and technology. At the same time, consulting widely among scholars and institutional leaders in the humanities, the working groups have been surveying the Endowment's present and future opportunities to bring national leadership and resources to bear on these four vital tasks. The four “working group papers” in this compilation embody the findings and recommendations that have so far emerged through an Endowment-wide deliberative process that continues to unfold. Rediscovering America through Place and Region is the first of these papers. We cherish regional differences and special places because they are an indispensable part of what makes our national experience emotionally real. America is not a generic brand. Even as economic and technological integration lead the country, if not the planet, toward cultural convergence, memory and affection pull us back to the particularities of family, place, and region. The persistent popularity of genealogy and local history express our yearning for connectedness—to a particular landscape, cultural tradition, dialect, or understanding of the past. The notorious anomie and alienation of modern life have inspired local resistance, both popular and elite, for as long as the world has been recognizably “modern.” In the 1930s, regionalist scholars such as Lewis Mumford and Walter Prescott Webb legitimized the study of particular places as a response to the dehumanizing tendency of technological civilization; and John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, and other Southern literary “agrarians” published their anti-industrialist manifesto I'// Take My Stand. Academic interest in American regionalism waned in the immediate post-World War II decades; but it has recently shown renewed signs of vigor, including the establishment, often with NEH funding, of a number of academic INTRODUCTION l programs and centers devoted to the interdisciplinary study of the South, the Great Plains, and other parts of the country. Since 1966 the Endowment has awarded more than $370 million in grant support for regionally oriented projects. Part of that money supported production of The Civil War, Ken Burns’s acclaimed television documentary series about an event he has called our national myth and our I/iad. The Civil War was also the greatest crisis of American regionalism. Historian Edward L. Ayers’s Valley of the Shadow project at the University of Virginia, also supported by the Endowment, is a web-accessible digital archive of Civil-War-era newspapers, photographs, letters, diaries, and other documents that gives researchers and students a unique window into davy life in Augusta County, Virginia, and Franklin County, Pennsylvania— two Shenandoah Valley counties located on either side of the Mason-Dixon Line. Professor Ayers thinks of regions as overlapping and intertwined zones of commonali- ty and difference. Augusta and Franklin counties were both situated in the same valley, they were settled by similar people, and they produced the same crops. But, in 1861 each rallied to a different side in our nation’s war between the regions. The Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), a project directed by the late Frederic Cassidy and supported for many years by the Endowment, graphically illustrates the complexities of American regionalism with maps that show where words and expressions are most commonly used. In Franklin County’s Chambersburg, for example, you might be advised to avoid the “mud wasps,” but in Augusta County's Staunton “mud dauber” or “dirt dauber” would describe the same insect. On the other hand, you are as likely to be served “hot cakes” or “flannel cakes” in both communities, but you probably would not get “flapjacks” in either. As part of the Endowment’s Rediscovering America theme, we recently launched the first phase of a grant competition that will help underwrite the establishment of ten regional humanities centers across the United States. An ambitious partnership of the Endowment and private contributors, the Regional Humanities Center initiative will create in each part of the country a “cultural hub” where scholars, teachers, students, and the public can come together to investigate customs, folklore, history, demography, geography, artistic expression, and anything else that defines the distinctiveness of America’s regions. The family history website and programs launched last Thanksgiving Day in conjunction with our My History is America’s History initiative are another example of how the NEH is helping each of us to rediscover America, its stories and its places. NATIONAL ENDOW MENT POR THE HUMANITIES The Report of the Working Group on Teaching and Lifelong Learning catalogues NEH achievements in humanities education, both formal and informal, since the agency’s founding. It is no exaggeration to say that they make an arresting list, one that includes some of the most salient advances of recent decades in teacher training and faculty development, educational technology, curriculum design, public television programming, museurn éxhibition, and library-based activities for the general public. NEH funding helped create the widely imitated Yale-New Haven model for school and university col- laborations to improve professional development opportunities for inner-city teachers. The popular Foxfire books on Appalachian folklore began as an NEH-supported classroom project. With ten years of NEH support, the Bay Area Writing Project at the University of California, Berkeley grew into the National Writing Project, now a fully institutionaliged activity that receives $3.2 million in annual funding from the Department of Education. From the Endowment’s earliest years, we have helped make intensive summer study opportunities such as seminars and institutes nationally available to school and college teachers of humanities subjects. The Endowment provided crucial outside support that enabled dozens of colleges and universities to establish a common core of learning in their undergraduate programs. More recently, NEH “venture capital” provided timely assistance to such now celebrated education technology projects as the Valley of the Shadow website; the Massachusetts Institure of Technology's widely used, interactive videodiscs for foreign language instruction; and EDSITEment, the one-stop- shopping web resource for humanities teachers and students that now incorporates 105 of the best education sites on the Internet. NEH grants in support of public programs in the humanities have helped to sustain a continuum of lifelong learning opportunities for everyone. As a result of the Endowment’s public programs, millions of adults who are working or retired, and no longer engaged in formal education, can nevertheless find cultural enrichment in libraries and museums, at historical sites, or on television in the communities where they live. Many of these programs are very well known to the public, but the Endowment’s sponsorship of them may not be. Blockbuster exhibitions that interpret other times and other cultures, such as Treasures of Tutankhamun ot Splendors of Imperial China, enriching fare for public television such as The Civil War or The Adams Chronicles, not to mention the handsome editions of the “Library of America” series or the hundreds of reading and discussion programs offered each year at local public libraries—these are just a few examples culled from the Endowment’s very extensive inventory of accomplishments in lifelong learning. INTRODUCTION 3 As The Report of the Working Group on Teaching and Lifelong Learning makes admirably clear, we are living in a time when educational practice of nearly every kind is in a stace of continual, exhilarating, and exasperating ferment. Top-down education reforms such as standards of learning are sometimes reinforcing, sometimes colliding with, bottom-up reforms such as site-based school management. An idea that the Endowment has long advocated—helping teachers to develop their subject competence, not just their pedagogical skills—is gaining renewed attention and respect. Computer automation and the digital revolution are rapidly transforming teaching and learning in ways that probably no one fully understands. The emer- gence of interdisciplinary fields such as regional studies is altering the ways the humanities are studied and taught. Digital broadcasting, mandatory for public television by 2003, will accommodate the simultaneous transmission of text, documents, still images, audio and video files, and interactive features, along with the content of conventional television programming. Information technology is hugely expanding the capabilities of local libraries, even as it permits individuals who have a web connection to bypass libraries altogether. Websites like My History is America’s History now reach millions via a public programming format that did not exist jusi a few years ago. In many ways, the Endowment’s opportunities in teaching and lifelong learning in the humanities present a dazzling prospect as we enter the twenty-first century. The working group recommends eight ways to capitalize on their latent potential. One recommendation, “NEH and the Library of America: Books for America’s Libraries” is already in the process of being realized with a $1 million gift from the Carnegie Foundation. The others—including safe and worthwhile after-school activities for children, family literacy programs, and digital television and multimedia programming—certainly merit careful consideration by the Endowment'’s private-sector partners in teaching and lifelong learning. The Report of the International Working Group is paper number three. As its authors emphasize, the act of Congress that established the Endowment in 1965 in order to encourage and support “natioual progress and scholarship in the humanities” imposed no geographical or topical limits on those disciplines. Indeed, the humanities know no national boundaries: they are the study of what makes us human. Bringing Americans the culture and history of other nations is an integral part of the Endowment’s role as national patron of the humanities. 4 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT POR THE HUMANITIES