NEH Announces $9.55 Million for 68 Humanities Projects 

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) today announced $9.55 million in grants for 68 humanities projects across the country.

The grants will underwrite the online Encyclopedia of Appalachia; enable production of a documentary, Diary from the Ashes, on the life and diary of Rywka Lipszyc, a 14-year-old Jewish girl whose diary was found in the rubble of an Auschwitz crematorium in 1945; and support research for a biography of inventor and scholar Nikola Tesla and his relationships with Gilded Age figures such as John Jacob Astor, Mark Twain, Sarah Bernhardt, and J.P. Morgan. 

“The National Endowment for the Humanities is proud to support the institutions and individuals who deepen our understanding of the past through rigorous scholarly research, enrich public knowledge through educational programs, exhibitions, and documentaries, and safeguard our nation’s cultural heritage for future generations,” said NEH Acting Chairman Michael McDonald. “The grants awarded today reflect the breadth and vitality of scholarship, preservation, and public programs across the humanities.” 

Numerous projects received grant funding as part of NEH’s A More Perfect Union initiative, which focuses on exploring America’s story and celebrating 250 years of cultural heritage in advance of the 2026 semiquincentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. These include an exhibition at the Museum of the American Revolution detailing the story of the Queen’s Rangers, the British legionary corps that fought to keep colonial rule during the Revolutionary War; and a narrative history of the 1832 nullification crisis. Other grant awards will support a discussion program for veterans, led by National University, focusing on the legacies and public memorialization of the Civil War and the Vietnam War; and expand the American Congregational Association’s New England Hidden Histories project to provide digital access to an additional 22,000 pages of early church records created during the Revolutionary War and its aftermath from institutions in Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont.

Twenty-three NEH Humanities Collections and Reference Resources grants will help preserve important collections of documents and artifacts and make their contents accessible to the public. These grants will digitize archival materials held by Rochester Institute of Technology documenting Deaf history and culture and records relating to the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. Other funding will combine in a single digital repository a vast array of theological, scientific, and philosophical manuscripts created before 1600 in multiple languages—including Latin, Dutch, German, Italian, and Arabic—from the libraries and archives of 23 institutions across the Midwest. A grant to the Jewish Theological Seminary will support the digitization of 7,000 fragile documents and ephemera chronicling Jewish American history and culture from the 17th through the mid-20th centuries, including items such as an 1872 lithograph of the consecration of New York’s Central Synagogue and a poster in Yiddish from the War Savings Club of New England informing readers how to assess the value of their 1918 War Savings Stamps. 

Several new NEH awards will support the development of curricula, courses, and educational programs at two- and four-year colleges and universities. Among these are grants to the University of Montevallo in Alabama to create a new minor in health humanities for students pursuing careers in health and medicine, and to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to implement an undergraduate certificate program in artificial intelligence (AI) and data ethics. Other awards will enable development of online courses for the University of Guam’s Micronesian Studies program, and support an initiative to integrate digital humanities tools and approaches within general education humanities courses at Thiel College in Pennsylvania. 

Additional funding will support planning for a 2027 exhibition on German Expressionist art at the Virginia Fine Arts Museum that will bring together 300 Die Brücke artworks collected in the early 1900s by Ludwig and Rosy Fischer but now dispersed across 20 German and U.S. museums. Another newly funded collaborative research project directed by scholars at Georgetown University and the University of California-San Diego will examine how the use of proprietary, data-intensive algorithmic educational technology used in U.S. classrooms affects student learning. 

NEH Summer Stipends will allow 18 humanities scholars to conduct archival research for books and articles on: early drawings and engravings created by artist, poet, and printer William Blake during his time as an engraver’s apprentice; linguistic analyses of ancient Mediterranean syllabic writing systems; and how Japanese institutions of everyday life helped spread democratic values in post-WWII Japan. Other stipend awards will support research for an online database of 3D models of the Great Marble Map of Rome, the third-century CE monumental carving depicting ancient Rome’s urban structures; and preparation of a book examining how T.S. Eliot’s childhood experiences in his hometown of St. Louis are reflected in his poetry.

A full list of grants by geographic location is available here.

NEH awarded grants in the following categories:

National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH): The National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Huma