The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) revealed its allocation of $41.3 million in grants, benefiting 280 humanities projects throughout the nation. Two Trinity College of Arts and Science Faculty are recipients of the grant.
Jocelyn Olcott
Jocelyn Olcott, Professor of History; International Comparative Studies; and Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies, was awarded the grant for her project “The Value of Love”, which is part of her larger Revaluing Care in the Global Economy project. The project explores the market and non-market ways in which care is ascribed value.
Over three years, Olcott and her team will expand their Working Papers Seminar, through which younger and less-represented researchers receive critical feedback from more senior scholars on their work. As part of the NEH grant, the team will also test possibilities for producing an open-access publication of working papers.
“Since the undervaluing of care has been a topic of concern for over a century with no substantive progress, we think it’s imperative to bring new perspectives and methodologies to bear on the issue,” said Olcott.
Chair of Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies Jennifer Nash applauds Professor Olcott’s award-winning and interdisciplinary research on the often highly devalued nature of care.
“Olcott has curated programs, papers and working groups that call us to ‘revalue’ care: not just to offer it a price tag on the market, but to think about what it might take to create a culture that notices, supports, encourages and facilitates the multiple forms of care work necessary for us all to flourish,” says Nash.
Wesley Hogan
Wesley Hogan is a Research Professor at the Franklin Humanities Institute and History. She was awarded an NEH grant for her project “SNCC and Grassroots Organizing: Building a More Perfect Union”.
In this project, Hogan, Jennifer Lawson and their teammates will lead a collaboration known as the SNCC Digital Gateway, a partnership between the SNCC Legacy Project, Duke’s Franklin Humanities Institute and the Duke University Libraries. This initiative aims to make the grassroots narratives of the civil rights movement accessible to a broader audience by utilizing a web portal, a K12 educational program and a collection of essential oral histories.
The grant will allow the team to run two-day workshops with each of their partners at six Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). They will also work with six civil rights/African American museums to expand knowledge of SNCC’s grassroots organizing to broader networks. These museums will help curate and disseminate Learning Toolkits on the grassroots citizens’ initiative on voting rights, the organizing tradition, Black power, women and gender, freedom teaching and art and culture in movement building.
“We’re proud, excited and determined to work with SNCC veterans and today’s Black Lives Matter activists to bring their practical and profound small-d democracy innovations — they are our modern Founders — to wider communities across the South,” said Hogan.