Humanities Iowa Awards $110,021 in Major Grants
Spring 2011
Humanities Iowa, the local affiliate for the National Endowment for the Humanities, awarded $110,021 in grants to fund projects across the state during its board meeting on November 12 and 13 in Council Bluffs, IA. This year, the major grants will be distributed to 14 different organizations. The awards were selected through a competitive application and review process and are made possible through Humanities Iowa and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Mini grants are awarded on a continual basis throguhout the year. Min-grants awarded for the last year are as follows:
Society of Fairfield Italian Americans |
Italian Culture Master Series |
$1500 |
Chariton Chamber & Development Corp. |
Lucas County Hay Bale Art Project |
$150 |
Mississippi Valley Blues Society, Davenport |
Educating Adults About American History and Culture through the Blues |
$1000 |
Sudanese American Community Services, Iowa City |
From Sudan to the Heartland: A Lecture and Concert by the Sudanese Americans in Iowa City |
$300 |
Dubuque Museum of Art |
Thomas Moran Lecture by Peter Bacon Hales |
$500 |
City of Chariton |
History of Local Aviation |
$800 |
American Gothic House Center, Eldon |
Creating an interactive outdoor exhibit space |
$1560 |
James Kennedy Public Library, Dyersville |
Tickled to Death: Laughter Makes the Best Mystery |
$500 |
Edmundson Art Foundation, Des Moines |
John and Mary Poppajohn Sculpture Park Education Guide |
$2220 |
Benton County Women’s Oral History Committee |
Sharing Her Own Story: Oral Histories of Ten Benton County Women |
$550 |
University of Iowa Digital Studio for the Public Humanities |
David Plowden’s Iowa Online |
$3000 |
Julien International Film Festival |
Sixteen Forty-Nine Film Screening |
$950 |
Fairfield Convention and Visitors Bureau |
Remembering Our Fallen Exhibit |
$3,000 |
Cedar County Historical Society and Museum |
A Day on the Prairie at Prairie Village |
$750 |
University of Iowa Hancher Auditorium |
Iowa and Invisible Man: Making Blackness Visible |
$500 |
Siouxland Human Investment Partnership |
The Great Hurt: Boarding Schools and the American Indian |
$2,500 |
Dubuque Museum of Art |
Three Programs to Support Edward S. Curtiss Exhibition |
$750 |
Sioux City Public Museum |
Three Tribes, Many Stories |
$2000 |
Bettendorf Public Library Foundation |
A Valentine for Faye Clow |
$250 |
League of Women Voters of Johnson County |
The U.S. Constitution and the U.S. Supreme Court: How They Impact Your Life |
$1800 |
Preservation Iowa, Des Moines |
12th Annual Iowa One Room School House Conference: Preserving Country Schools DVDs |
$500 |
Green Hollow Center |
Iowa Hills & Heritage Festival |
$1000 |
Dallas County Conservation Board |
Prairie Awakening—A Journey into Indigenous Learning |
$1000 |
Linn County Conservation Department |
Meskwaki Cultural Day: Bringing Traditions Back |
$1000 |
Edmundson Art Foundation |
2011 Fall Lecture Series |
$2000 |
Dubuque Museum of Art |
Three Lectures in Celebration of Grant Wood’s 120th Birthday |
$1000 |
Major Grants awarded for Spring 2011, Fall 2010, Spring 2010, and Fall 2009.
The grants awarded are:
Title of Project: 32nd Annual Celebration of Lifelong Learning
Sponsoring Organization: CommUniversity, Inc.
Grant: $4,000
Project Description: The project consists of continuing education classes during Sunday afternoons in February on the St. Ambrose University campus. A keynote address kicks off the program, and the proposed speaker this year is Stephen Bloom, professor journalism and Bessie Dutton Murray Professional Scholar at the University of Iowa. Faculty are drawn from area colleges and churches. CommUniversity’s volunteer board selects instructors for course in theology, arts and humanities, personal enrichment, and public affairs. It produces a widely disseminated promotional brochure. Among the already approved 2011 course offerings are: Georgia O’Keeffe and Her Art, The Psychology of Film, Beginning Spanish, Contemporary Africa, Understandings and Misunderstandings, and Egyptology. All four-week classes are open to the public for a $25 fee.
Title of Project: History of Blindness in Iowa
Sponsoring Organization: Iowa Department for the Blind
Grant: $14,975
Project Description: The project is a public education component to capture and present the history of blindness in Iowa and to explore the central role blind Iowans played in a national civil rights movement for blind Americans. The information, materials, and personal histories that have already been collected will be presented to the public through permanent and traveling exhibits, a public forum, a lecture, and a web site. The programs will present how blindness affects the day-to-day lives of blind and visually impaired Iowans, their families, and communities. They will also provide insight into the social changes affecting blind people in terms of employment, education, family and community life over the past 85 years.
Title of Project: AViD (Authors Visiting in Des Moines) 2011
Sponsoring Organization: Des Moines Public Library Foundation
Grant: $7,500
Project Description: The project is a free lecture series designed to appeal to a diverse audience in the greater Des Moines community. It is the series’ 11th year. Nationally and regionally known authors will discuss the challenges and rewards that come with being an author, as well as touch on topics from their writing. Authors are selected because their work stimulates critical thinking, deepens understanding, and inspires a greater appreciation of books, writers, and reading. The central event for each visiting author is an evening lecture/reading program, followed by an audience A&A session moderated by a humanist scholar or expert in the writer’s field. A public reception is held before or after many of these evening programs, offering an opportunity for informal discussions with the authors. Each author is also asked to visit a local high school or college to interact with students. Several authors usually give substantive radio interviews. Each series is now videorecorded and made available for checkout and the series will be broadcast statewide on IPTV. Confirmed authors for the series are Debbie Macomber (fiction) and Patrick J. Carr and Maria J Kefalas (nonfiction, cosponsored with the Iowa History Center at Simpson College). Other authors currently under discussion include Kathryn Stockett (fiction) and Ann Patchett (fiction).
Title of Project: Bridges to Diversity
Sponsoring Organization: Indian Hills Community College
Grant: $5,000
Project Description: The project is a series of lectures, activities and performance intended to help participants learn about different cultures and backgrounds. The series includes a Martin Luther King Day commemoration in January; Black History Month readings, films and discussion panels in February; a Judo and Origami demonstration in April; the annual IHCC Diversity Conference also in April; and a Cinco de Mayo celebration in May. All events are open to the public and will take place on the IHCC campus. The largest event is the diversity conference, which will charge a registration fee ($20, student $10). It will feature 30–35 breakout sessions with tracks for educators, employers, health care providers, human services/legal professionals, and business/industry. The keynote speaker will be Terrence Roberts, one of the Little Rock Nine, who will discuss his struggle as a black student in 1957 at the all-white Little Rock Central High School.
Title of Project: Church Basements and Children’s Homes: Danish-American Missions Here and Abroad
Sponsoring Organization: The Danish Immigrant Museum
Grant: $7,000
Project Description: The project is a temporary museum exhibit and traveling display that will be on display at the museum from mid-April through October 2011. It will explore the variety of church-based efforts within Danish-American communities to support children’s homes, mission schools, health care, and other social services for vulnerable populations within the U.S. and abroad. The Elim Children’s Home in Elk Horn will be one featured example. The traveling version of the exhibit will be available to museums, libraries, and other cultural institutions and groups. It will include self-standing banners and not artifacts, so as to be accessible to a broader range of venues.
Title of Project: Up for Discussion: Creating a Sustainable Decorah
Sponsoring Organization: The Pepperfield Project
Grant: $7,200
Project Description: The project will bring Gary Holthaus to live in Decorah for two months (mid-March to mid-May 2011) as a humanist in residence. A suite of humanities activities will engage Decorah citizens in a conversation about sustainability. This conversation has already begun, with a Sustainable Decorah Initiative adopted by the city council. The purpose of this project would be to broaden the number and demographic character of the participants, and to deepen the understanding of sustainability. Activities will include 60 one-on-one conversations with local residents, public meetings, discussion groups, a public reading, talks at civic organizations as well as more informal groups, a four-week reading/discussion series at the public library, interviews with both public and commercial radio as well as local newspapers. All activities will explore the nature of sustainability and citizens’ views of the future of Decorah. Holthaus will write a report to Decorah about his findings, which he will present at a public meeting in September 2011. Copies will be posted on local Internet sites and will be available at the public library.
Title of Project: Central College Writers’ Reading Series
Sponsoring Organization: Central College, Geisler Library
Grant: $7,000
Project Description: This series of readings was established in 1987 to promote an appreciation of books and their authors. It is a collaboration between Central College’s English department and library and brings notable local, national, and international writers to read and discuss their works. The series is free, open to the public, and advertised to the community. Each reading is videotaped, and copies of the video are given to the writer and maintained in the college library archives. The authors’ works are made available for purchase in the Central College bookstore, and a reception on campus typically follows each reading to allow for further interaction with the writer. This year, visiting authors will all be nonfiction writers: anthropologist and essayist Robert Leonard, essayist John D’Agata, journalist Alexandra Fuller, and environmental writer Terry Tempest Williams.
Title of Project: Main Streets of Linn County
Sponsoring Organization: Linn County Historical Society/Carl and Mary Koehler History Center
Grant: $6,564
Project Description: The project is a temporary exhibit on small-town business districts, to be on display from June to December 2011 at the History Center. Besides specific panels on each of the 22 Main Street business districts in Linn County, the exhibit will include 6 contextual panels on the following topics: small town economics, suburban sprawl, school consolidation, young people leaving rural Iowa, changes in the family farm, and historical comparisons of businesses in small towns. Two scholars will gather information on these topics and write a total of 6 papers interpreting them. The papers will be condensed and used as text in the 6 contextual panels. The scholars, Kelly Wenig, M.A., a doctoral candidate in history at ISU, and Peter Hoehnle, Ph.D., project manager of the Iowa Valley RC&D, will have a joint discussion of their findings at the opening of the exhibit, and each will give an individual presentation in the fall. The fully annotated papers will be distributed to museum docents and will also be preserved in the society’s archives and available to researchers. Once the exhibit has closed, there is a possibility that the panels could become a traveling exhibit.
Title of Project: Costumes as Performance and Activism
Sponsoring Organization: University of Northern Iowa, Department of Theatre
Grant: $8,000
Project Description: The project explores Iowa’s diverse population as expressed in costumes and ethnic dance. It includes two museum exhibits, one at the UNI Museum and the other at the Hearst Center for the Arts in Waterloo, along with a dance event. The “Talking Textiles” exhibit will feature rarely seen ethnic textiles from the UNI Museum’s permanent collection, interpreting the meanings of motifs expressed in textile creation, color, and design. The “Iowa Heritage Costume Invitational” at the Hearst Center will display and interpret a collection of ethnic costumes for dance or ceremony that sample the variety of immigrant cultures that have settled in Iowa. “Dancing through Time and Place,” performed at the Oster Regent Theater in Cedar Falls will explain through dance and narration the origin and development of ethnic dances and the rich costume traditions of numerous groups now living in Iowa. All three programs will demonstrate and discuss how costume serves as a means of establishing group identity and of internal communication for ethnic groups. All events will take place in the fall and overlap on the weekend of October 14–15, at which time special programming at the exhibits will include representatives from several of Iowa’s ethnic museums as well as a scholar making a presentation on costume and identity.
Title of Project: Native American Art & Artifacts of the Southwest: The Washington, Iowa Collection
Sponsoring Organization: Washington Free Public Library
Grant: $5,000
Project Description: The project involves the research, description, appraisal, and display of a large collection of Native American art and artifacts from the Southwestern U.S., which was donated to the Washington Public Library in 1964. Much of the collection appears to be Hopi, with some Apache, Navajo, and Pima pieces, including pottery, jewelery, tools, and religious object. Preliminary cursory research indicates that the collection is extraordinary with some potentially important items. The humanities scholar, Dr. Leona Zastrow, will give a public lecture on her findings, organize the collection for display at the library, and develop informational signage. The collection will be on display during the month of February, and then will be exhibited periodically in rotation with other displays.
Title of Project: The Only One: Exploring the Experience of Being a Minority in Iowa
Sponsoring Organization: Johnson County Historical Society
Grant: $10,000
Project Description: The project involves gathering oral histories, photographs, and other historical documentation of the racial and ethnic minority experience in Iowa, resulting in concurrent year-long museum exhibitions at the Johnson County Historical Society and the African American Museum of Iowa. The research and exhibitions will be organized around historic group portraits in which only one or two group members are visibly of a different racial or ethnic background than the majority. Interwoven with the photographs will be video, audio, and written excerpts from materials gathered by the project. Oral histories will be conducted by AAMI staff, which has the necessary equipment, as well as experience with an ongoing statewide oral history project. Oral histories will be deposited in the archives of both AAMI and JCHS. A traveling exhibit will be developed at the end of the permanent exhibit.
Title of Project: Maasdam Barns Historic Welcome Center and Barns Exhibits
Sponsoring Organization: Maasdam Barn Preservation Committee
Grant: $10,000
Project Description: The project will develop interpretive exhibits and signs as part of the development of an educational tourist center located at the historic Maasdam farmstead. The focus will be on the important role of the draft horse in all aspects of daily life prior to industrial mechanization. In the process it will share the stories of the Maasdams, Turneys, and Loudens, entrepreneurs who played significant roles in the history of Fairfield, and who had state, national, and international impact as manufacturers. This phase of the project will develop exhibits and signs inside each of the three historic barns and an adjacent pole barn. Interior exhibits will feature actual historic tools, implements, and artifacts of the era.
Title of Project: Understanding the Middle East and Islam: Perspectives, Strategies and Tools for Teaching
Sponsoring Organization: Middle East Policy Council
Grant: $6,500
Project Description: The project involves a series of six two-day workshops for educators on the Middle East, Islam, and Muslims, distributed geographically across Iowa (Elkader, Pocahontas, Cedar Rapids, Ottumwa, Sioux City, Council Bluffs). Workshop content will focus on stereotypes and realities of the Middle East and Muslims, focusing particularly on the diversity of identity, ethnicity, religious belief and practice and perspectives within Muslim communities in the Middle East and beyond. Workshops will be interactive and customized to the needs of each district, and topics will encompass teachable moments in Islamic history, the artistic and scientific contributions of Muslims, gender roles and their change over time and in different context, the importance of Arabic, teaching and learning with literature, contemporary issues in the Middle East, and the sound arts in Islam. Resources will be distributed to teachers primarily in electronic form, both at the workshop and through a web space that will allow for commentary and interaction beyond the workshop period. The organization will also contact public libraries, civic organizations, and/or senior centers in each AEA’s district to arrange public talks on Islam and Muslims in America from a religious studies and historical perspective, in order to make the best use of their time and funds while in Iowa.
Title of Project:Unconditional Loyalty: The Service of African Americans in the Military
Sponsoring Organization: African American Museum of Iowa
Grant: $11,282
Project Description: The project involves a statewide 21-lecture series and traveling exhibit associated with a major exhibit at the AAMI in Cedar Rapids. The exhibits will encompass the stories of African American soldiers from pre-Revolutionary War to present-day conflicts. The major exhibit will make use of historical artifacts and documents, photographs, audio/visual components and immersive environments to explore the evolving roles of African Americans in the military. The traveling exhibits will use photographs and text to focus on achievement and progression of diversity within the Military, while the lecture series will emphasize the struggles facing African American servicemen and servicewomen during the conflicts. The traveling exhibits will be used in unconventional settings (e.g., Hy-Vee Stores) as well as libraries and schools, and will be placed to help advertise the lecture series.
