July 29, 2015

NEH launches the Public Scholar Program to encourage general interest in humanities projects

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The NEH wants to get humanities scholarship "into book clubs and onto best-seller lists."

The NEH wants to get humanities scholarship “into book clubs and onto best-seller lists.”

According to Ron Charles at The Washington Post, the National Endowment for the Humanities is aiming to change the attitudes as well as the economics of writing scholarship with their new Public Scholar program.

The Public Scholar program, a major new initiative from the National Endowment for the Humanities, is designed to promote the publication of scholarly nonfiction books for a general audience, and the first round of grants has just been announced: a total of $1.7 million to 36 writers across a broad collection of disciplines. The grants range from $25,200 to $50,400.

In amounts ranging from $25,200 to $50,400, a total of $1.7 million was awarded to 36 writers. The 36 grants went to award winners (Pulitzer and National Book) as well as writers who aren’t as well known. (Charles has the full list at the bottom of his story.)

The winners include Pulitzer Prize-winner Diane McWhorter, who’s working on a book about the Moon landing and the civil rights era in Huntsville, Ala.,; National Book Award-winner Kevin Boyle, who’s writing about an early 20th-century anarchist; and National Book Award-winner Edward Ball, who will return to the territory of his bestselling “Slaves in the Family” to write a biography of his great-great grandfather.

But there are also a number of grants going to less well-known scholars writing about relatively arcane subjects, such as a history of the science of water, a biography of Adm. William Leahy and a study of American and British dialects.

On the NEH website, it’s noted that humanities scholarship, while often specialized, “also strive to engage broad audiences in exploring subjects of general interest. They seek to deepen our understanding of the human condition as well as current conditions and contemporary problems.” In the instructions to applicants, it’s written that “the challenge is to make sense of a significant topic in a way that will appeal to general readers,” and indeed, Charles notes that the NEH wants to get these works “into book clubs and onto best-seller lists.” So that’s the attitude. As for the economics:

Anne Boyd Rioux, a professor of English and women’s and gender studies at the University of New Orleans, won $50,400 for a book about Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel “Little Women.” She noted that many universities have cut back the number of sabbaticals they can offer, which makes taking time off for research prohibitively expensive for professors. And other sources of income are drying up, too. “Trade publishers are offering smaller and smaller advances, particularly for nonfiction books,” Rioux said. “It is nearly impossible, if you aren’t a David McCullough, to earn an advance large enough to support the writing and research of a serious nonfiction book.”

Grant winner McWhorter agrees. Charles quotes her, “My diminishing tribe of marathon writers who function outside the academy (or any establishment) would be hard-pressed to survive between payouts on a publisher’s advance without fellowships such as these.”

 

Julia Fleischaker is the director of marketing and publicity at Melville House.

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