NEH Funds Summer Seminars and Institutes for Nation's Teachers

Participants to study with top humanities scholars at leading academic institutions

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) today announced its schedule of summer seminars and institutes in separate programs for K-12 teachers and college and university faculty. NEH seminars and institutes provide the nation's teachers with summer opportunities for study with top humanities scholars on a wide range of specific topics in history, literature, and other humanities disciplines.

"For more than 30 years, NEH summer programs have provided almost 50,000 teachers with opportunities to become students again for a few weeks and to pursue their intellectual interests with some of the nation's finest humanities scholars," said NEH Chairman Bruce Cole. "Teachers selected to participate in 2005 seminars or institutes will find the experience both rigorous and rewarding."

For elementary and secondary school teachers from public, charter, private, parochial, and home schools, each seminar enables 15 participants to explore a topic or set of readings with a scholar having special interest and expertise in the field. The principal goal of the seminar is to engage teachers in the scholarly enterprise and to expand and deepen their understanding of the humanities, through reading, discussion, writing, and reflection. The 14 upcoming summer summers will examine topics that include Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, "Reading Don Quixote," and "Legacies of World War II in France" (in Paris and Caen, France).

An institute for school teachers, typically led by a team of core faculty and visiting scholars, is designed to present the best available scholarship on important humanities issues and works taught in the nation's schools. The 25 to 35 participating teachers compare and synthesize the various perspectives offered by the faculty, make connections between the institute content and classroom applications, and often develop improved teaching materials for their classrooms. The 14 institute topics this year include "Teaching Jazz as American Culture," "Mozart's Worlds" (in Vienna, Austria), "The Coming of the U.S. Civil War," and "George Washington and His Legacy."

Each of the 20 seminars for college and university teachers includes 15 participants working in collaboration with one or two leading scholars. Participants have access to a major library collection, with time reserved to pursue individual research and study projects. This year's seminar topics include "Early American Microhistories," "Joseph Smith and the Origins of Mormonism," and "The Early American Republic and the Problem of Governance." This year's 12 institutes for college and university teachers, which provide intensive, collaborative study of texts, topics, and ideas central to undergraduate teaching in the humanities, will examine topics that include "Rethinking America in Global Perspective," "Nationhood and Healing in the Post-Civil War American West," and "Latin American Philosophy."

A complete list of 2005 NEH Summer Seminars and Institutes, with contact information for individual directors, can be found on NEH's website. The list is also available as a PDF, located in the above box. Applications must be submitted to the appropriate project director by March 1, 2005. Teachers selected to participate in a seminar or institute will receive stipends of $1,800 to $4,200 (determined by the length of the program, from two to six weeks) to help cover travel costs, books and other research expenses, and living expenses. In late January, NEH will announce its 2005 "Landmarks of American History" workshops, a separate program of one-week workshops for school teachers and community college teachers.