• Finding the Hero in History
• A Letter from the Executive Director
• Humanities Prize
• Ashley Bryan
• Born to Read: Volunteer Readers
• Barn Again!
• Winter Weekend
• Poetry in Maine Libraries
• Grant Awards
• Awards

Awards

The Maine Humanities Council recently received two National Endowment for the Humanities grants totaling $400,000. These grants were awarded to fund the MHC’s nationally recognized program, Literature & Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Health Care,® and a Teachers for a New Century program, Hawthorne and Longfellow: A Literary Friendship.

NEH awards are highly competitive and involve a rigorous review and evaluation process leading to the selection of the highest quality projects in humanities research, education, preservation and public programs.

The special projects grant awarded for Literature & Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Health Care,® was one of only six granted nationwide. The MHC was awarded $270,000 for this national hospital-based reading and discussion program for health care professionals, a program created by the MHC that influences the way health care professionals understand their work and their relationships with patients and each other.

Twenty-five hospitals throughout Maine have participated in Literature & Medicine over the last 8 years, with 17 hospitals and over 300 health care professionals expected to participate in 2005. In addition, the MHC works with other state humanities councils throughout the U.S. to implement their own Literature & Medicine programs. The grant will provide funding for national expansion, with plans to bring four more state councils into the program over the next three years. The MHC supports the national program with training institutes, conferences, regional meetings, an online newsletter, program materials, and technical assistance. In addition, the grant will provide funding for a training institute in 2006 and funding to continue Literature & Medicine programming in Maine.

The second grant, for $133,798, is an NEH Institute for School Teachers grant, awarded for Hawthorne and Longfellow, a three-week interdisciplinary summer institute for 30 school teachers from across the country. The program explores the personal and professional relationship between Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Participants will engage with scholars in close reading of texts, discussion of historical context and new scholarship, and guided field trips to relevant historical sites. The NEH has designated Hawthorne and Longfellow as a “We the People” project. The NEH defines “We the People” as an initiative that seeks “to encourage and strengthen the teaching, study, and understanding of American history and culture through the support of projects that explore significant events and themes in our nation’s history and culture and that advance knowledge of the principles that define America.”