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NEH Fellowships Enhance Arts and Letters Intellectual Life
Arts and Letters Leads in NEH Fellowships Awarded Since 1999
The University of Notre Dame leads the nation’s top 25 research universities in the total number of National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowships awarded to its faculty in the past seven years.
In December 2006, the NEH announced that five faculty members from the College of Arts and Letters received the prestigious fellowships, bringing the total number of NEH fellowships granted to Notre Dame scholars to 29 since 1999.
Scholars from around the country evaluate fellowship applications, in which researchers propose a project that leads to the production of articles, monographs on specialized subjects, or books on broad topics. The proposals have an estimated success rate of 12% to 14%, making Notre Dame’s record all the more impressive.
How has Notre Dame reached such a high level of achievement?
In recent years, the College of Arts and Letters has recruited some of the nation's leading humanities scholars. Their research projects compare favorably with those occurring at Harvard, Yale, the University of Chicago, and the University of Michigan.
These distinguished scholars have been impressed by the distinct combination of resources and supportive community offered at Notre Dame. The Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts (ISLA) is a prime example.
ISLA provides internal funding, critiques draft proposals, and hosts fellowship workshops.
"I think ISLA is one of the main reasons that Notre Dame is doing so well,” says Mary Burgess Smyth, assistant professor of English and a recipient of a 2007 NEH award. “Their website is excellent; they send out reminders to overly busy faculty, letting them know of deadlines that might otherwise get forgotten; and they seem constantly to be coming up with new internal funding initiatives to support faculty here, as well as scanning the wider horizon for external grants that we might not have heard about."
“We've developed an effective system for encouraging and helping faculty members get fellowship applications out,” says Kenneth Garcia, associate director of ISLA.
2007 recipient James Turner, Rev. John J. Cavanaugh, C.S.C., Professor of Humanities and professor of history, adds his perspective: "Grant paperwork can be burdensome and confusing. ISLA dotted all the 'i's,' crossed all the 't's,' and got all the signatures for me. They freed me to work on the substance of my proposal."
Notre Dame’s 2007 NEH Fellowship recipients are:
- Michael Brownstein, associate professor of East Asian languages and literatures, for a project titled “Four Japanese Melodramas.”
- Margaret Doody, John and Barbara Glynn Professor of Literature, for "The Mystics' Enlightenment: Pico, della Mirandola, Paracelsus and Jacob Boehme."
- Mary Burgess Smyth, assistant professor of English, for “British Modernism and the Four Nations.”
- James Turner, Rev. John J. Cavanaugh, C.S.C., Professor of Humanities and professor of history, for “Philology and the Shaping of the Modern Humanities.”
- Catherine Zuckert, Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor of Political Science, for “Machiavellian Politics.”
Learn More >
Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts
http://isla.nd.edu
Research Centers and Opportunities
Guidelines for Fellowships
http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/fellowships.html