NEH Grants in Ancient Studies - March 9, 2009

This morning the National Endowment for the Humanities announced twenty million dollars in grants to projects enriching humanities research, education, access, and public programming. Well over two million dollars went to projects realting to the ancient world.

University of California, Berkeley Outright: $254,000 [Humanities Collections & Resources] Project Director: Niek Veldhuis Project Title: Royal Lexicography: From Scholarship to Politics Project Description: Digitization of lexical texts (bilingual Sumerian-Akkadian dictionaries, synonym lists, and sign lists) found in the library of the Assyrian king Assurbanipal (668-630 B.C.). The project would make available cataloging information and images of all cuneiform tablets coupled with transliterations and translations of the texts.

University of California, Berkeley Outright: $186,000
Matching: $40,000 [Humanities Collections & Resources] Project Director: Deborah Anderson Project Title: Universal Scripts Project Project Description: A research and development project to incorporate seventeen historical and minority language scripts into the Unicode standard for character representation.

University of California, Los Angeles, Outright: $100,800 Fowler Museum of Cultural History [Fellowships at Digital Humanities Centers] Project Director: Diane Favro Project Title: Statues of the Late Antique Roman Forum: Historical Memory and Digital Reconstruction.

Unaffiliated Independent Scholar Outright: $50,000 [Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants] Project Director: Amy Gansell Project Title: Identifying Regional Design Templates of Ancient Near Eastern Ivory Sculptures of Women Using Computer Technology Project Description: Development of pattern-recognition software that will be tested against ancient Near Eastern ivory sculptures of women.

American Schools of Oriental Research Outright: $300,903 [Humanities Collections & Resources] Project Director: Eric Meyers Project Title: ASOR- Near East Archaeology Archives Project Description: Arranging and describing the contents of three geographically dispersed archives that focus on archaeological excavations and the history of archaeology in the Middle East from 1871 to the present, as well as creating finding aids and mounting digitized materials on the Internet.

Harvard University Outright: $235,000 [Humanities Collections & Resources] Project Director: Peter Bol Project Title: China Biographical Database Project Project Description: Expansion of a Chinese biographical database of prominent political and cultural figures since ancient times. To expedite the incorporation of biographical data, the project would combine human editing with automated programs for extracting information from relevant sources.

Peabody Essex Museum Outright: $380,000 [America's Historical & Cultural Organizations Implementation] Project Director: Daniel Finamore Project Title: Fiery Pool: Maya and the Mythic Sea Project Description: Implementation of a traveling exhibition, a catalog, a Web site, and educational and public programs that will offer new perspectives on the centrality of water in ancient Maya art and culture.

Michigan State University Outright: $49,575 [Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants] Project Director: Ethan Watrall Project Title: Red Land/Black Land: Teaching Ancient Egyptian History Through GameBased Learning Project Description: The development of a modification of the game Civilization IV that would allow students to explore ancient Egypt.

Bard College Outright: $6,000 [Summer Stipends] Project Director: James Romm Project Title: Afghanistan after Alexander the Great

Columbia University Outright: $200,000
Matching: $150,000 [Humanities Collections & Resources] Project Director: Ehsan Yarshater Project Title: Encyclopaedia Iranica [EI] Project Description: Preparation of the "Encyclopædia Iranica," a multi-disciplinary reference work and research tool on Iranian history and civilization from prehistory to the present.

Oberlin College Outright: $6,000 [Summer Stipends] Project Director: Cynthia Chapman Project Title: The House of the Mother: The Identity and Function of the Natal Family in Ancient Israelite Kinship Structures.

Bryn Mawr College Outright: $6,000 [Summer Stipends] Project Director: Yonglin Jiang Project Title: Negotiating Justice: Local Adjudication and Social Change in Late Imperial China.

American Research Institute in Turkey Outright: $244,800
[Fellowship Programs at Independent Research Institutions]
Project Director: G. Kenneth Sams
Project Title: Advanced Fellowships for Research in the Humanities in Turkey
Project Description: The equivalent of one and a half fellowships per year for three years.

University of Pennsylvania Outright: $39,996
[America's Historical and Cultural Organizations Planning]
Project Director: Loa Traxler
Project Title: The Ancient Maya City
Project Description: Planning for a traveling exhibition, a web exhibition, a publication, and programs on the Maya city of Copán.

Brigham Young University, Provo Outright: $349,155 [Humanities Collections & Resources] Project Director: Roger Macfarlane Project Title: Multispectral Imaging Project Project Description: Multi-spectral imaging of 400 illegible, or legibly problematic papyri from collections at the University of Michigan; University of California, Berkeley; and Columbia University. The resulting images would be disseminated via the Web-based Advanced Papyrological Information System (APIS).