07 2007 ANNUAL REPORT NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES 3 CHAIRMAN’S LETTER The President The White House Washington, D.C. 20500 Dear Mr. President: It is my privilege to present to you the 2007 annual report of the National Endowment for the Humanities. In September 2007, NEH’s We the People program celebrated its fifth anniversary. This year We the People continued to strengthen the teaching, study, and understanding of American history and culture through grants supporting hundreds of projects, including traveling library exhibitions on great Americans such as Benjamin Franklin; documentary films; summer workshops for school- teachers; and our annual We the People Bookshelf program for libraries. In 2007 NEH also launched the pilot phase of an exciting new We the People initiative called “Picturing America,” which seeks to put some of our nation’s artistic masterpieces and iconic images in our schools, where they will help students trace our national story and learn about America’s principles. We the People is also ensuring that the “first draft” of our history is widely available. In March, we joined our partners at the Library of Congress to announce the debut of the “Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers” website, featuring more than 226,000 pages of public domain newspapers from six states and the District of Columbia published between 1900 and 1910. Ultimately, the “Chronicling America” website will offer all Americans a free, searchable database of some thirty million pages of historic U.S. newspapers. As NEH worked this year to promote and preserve America’s cultural heritage, we also expanded our efforts to collaborate and exchange new ideas in the humanities with our peers in other nations. In June, NEH senior leaders traveled to the People’s Republic of China, together with senior leaders of the other federal cultural agencies and members of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, as part of the first such U.S. cultural delegation to that nation. That month the Endowment also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the National Research Council of Italy, to explore how we could promote cultural exchange and scholarly research in the humanities between Italy and the United States. Through these initiatives and many others, NEH is helping our citizens to explore both our own nation’s history as well as the history and culture of civilizations beyond our shores—bringing great ideas and the riches of our past to millions of Americans. BRUCE COLE Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES 31 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ................................................................................................................... 3 Jefferson Lecture ............................................................................................................ 4 National Humanities Medalists ....................................................................................... 5 Division of Education Programs ..................................................................................... 7 Division of Preservation and Access ................................................................................ 14 Division of Public Programs ........................................................................................... 26 Division of Research Programs ....................................................................................... 32 Office of Challenge Grants.............................................................................................. 41 Office of Federal/State Partnership ................................................................................. 46 Miscellaneous Grants ..................................................................................................... 54 Panelists......................................................................................................................... 57 National Council on the Humanities ............................................................................... 74 Senior Staff .................................................................................................................... 75 Budget Appropriation ..................................................................................................... 76 TABLE OF CONTENTS 2 THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES In order “to promote progress and scholarship in the humanities and the arts in the United States,” Congress enacted the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965. This act established the National Endowment for the Humanities as an independent grant-making agency of the federal government to support research, education, and public programs in the humanities. In fiscal year 2007, grants were made through the Federal/State Partnership, four divisions (Education Programs, Preservation and Access, Public Programs, and Research Programs) and the Office of Challenge Grants. The act that established the National Endowment for the Humanities says, “The term ‘humani- ties’ includes, but is not limited to, the study of the following: language, both modern and classical; linguistics; literature; history; jurisprudence; philosophy; archaeology; comparative religion; ethics; the history, criticism, and theory of the arts; those aspects of social sciences which have humanistic content and employ humanistic methods; and the study and application of the humanities to the human environment with particular attention to reflecting our diverse heritage, traditions, and his- tory and to the relevance of the humanities to the current conditions of national life.” The National Endowment for the Humanities supports exemplary work to advance and dis- seminate knowledge in all the disciplines of the humanities. Endowment support is intended to complement and assist private and local efforts and to serve as a catalyst to increase nonfederal support for projects of high quality. To date, NEH matching grants have helped generate almost approximately $1.98 billion in gift funds. Each application to the Endowment is assessed by knowledgeable persons outside the agency who are asked for their judgments about the quality and significance of the proposed project. Seven hundred and ninety-seven scholars, professionals in the humanities, and other experts served on 174 panels throughout the year. INTRODUCTION 3 JEFFERSON LECTURE On May 8, 2007, Harvey Mansfield delivered the 36th Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities at the Warner Theatre in Washington, DC. His talk was on “How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science.” The Jefferson Lecture was established in 1972 as the highest honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual and public achievement in the humanities. For more than forty years, Harvey Mansfield has been writing and teaching about political philosophy. His commentary “demonstrates the virtues that should guide scholars of the humani- ties,” writes Mark Blitz, a former student. Blitz explains those virtues as “patient exploration of the intention of a superior author, attention to other scholars and generosity to trailblazing teachers, brilliance and wit, and an eye toward what can improve us here and now.” Mansfield examines both contemporary politics and their historical origins. His fourteen books delve into the words of past thinkers such as Edmund Burke and Machiavelli, where he finds answers to puzzles such as why we believe today that political parties are respectable or desirable? The “Settlement of 1688,” Mansfield writes, “. resolved the religious issue by demoting it. Party government required such a separation, because it was the operation of the religious issue in politics which caused great parties.” Mansfield credits Machiavelli as the mastermind behind modernity. “I think he was responsible for the original insight behind the American presidency,” says Mansfield. “Our country is the first repub- lic that had strong executive power, as previously it was thought that executive power was contrary to republican principles. But we managed to combine this princely power with the people’s authority.” Mansfield grew up immersed in the field of politics—in New Haven, where his father was a professor of political science, and also in Washington, D.C., where his father worked for the Office of Price Administration during World War II. Mansfield remembers D.C. as an exciting place to be: “I saw many famous events, like Franklin Roosevelt’s funeral and the two parades, for victory in Europe and victory in Japan.” Years later, when he was an undergraduate at Harvard, a teaching assistant noted, “It’s in the cards for you to become a political scientist.” Mansfield recalls, “I don’t remember ever seriously considering any alternative.” He went on to earn his PhD from Harvard in 1961, and began teaching there the next year. Mansfield’s first book, Statesmanship and Party Government: A Study of Burke and Bolingbroke, came out in 1965. Since then he has published thirteen more books including three translations of Machiavelli and a translation of Alex de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, which he co-trans- lated with his late wife Delba Winthrop. Articles and political analysis by Mansfield frequently appear in periodicals such as the Weekly Standard, the Wall Street Journal, the New Republic, the National Review, and the Times Literary Supplement. Mansfield’s most recent book, Manliness,