The Division of Research Programs supports scholarly research that advances knowledge and understanding of the humanities. Awards are made to scholars working on research projects of significance to specific humanities fields and to the humanities as a whole. For example, grants support projects as diverse as the deciphering and editing of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the editing of the correspondence of Charles Darwin. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s A Midwife’s Tale (a biography of a midwife, based on her 1785-1812 diary, that brings to life ordinary people’s experiences in post-Revolutionary America) and William Taubman’s Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (a biography of a leader of Soviet Russia) are just two of a number of NEH-supported books that have received the Pulitzer Prize. Translations of materials in other languages bring little-known foreign works, such as the plays of Miguel de Cervantes, to American readers.   Projects like these add to the existing store of knowledge and inform every area of the humanities.

The scholarly research supported by the division also benefits humanities education and public programming. Teachers make use of projects supported by the Scholarly Editions program in their classrooms. For example, the papers of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King are taught in American history classes, and the literary masterworks of writers like Percy Bysshe Shelley and Willa Cather are taught in English classes.  Archaeology projects—supported by the Collaborative Research program—unearth artifacts used by museum curators in mounting exhibitions that teach us what life was like in ancient civilizations.  Producers of television documentaries rely on new research findings in many fields—such as American history and the history of science—to inform their programs. In these ways scholars supported by NEH grants produce research that interests and benefits a wide audience.

Jane Aikin, Director of the Division of Research Programs, received a Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Before coming to NEH she held faculty and administrative positions at Indiana University, Bloomington, and at Kent State University and was on the program staff of the Council on Library Resources, Inc., and the Association of Research Libraries. Jane’s publications include The Nation’s Great Library: Herbert Putnam and the Library of Congress, 1899-1939 (1993) and, with John Y. Cole, The Encyclopedia of the Library of Congress: For Congress, the Nation, and the World (2005).

Prizes won by NEH-supported books

      15       Pulitzer prizes for history and biography

      17       Bancroft prizes (for the best book in American history
                  published in a given year)

Other statistics:

 6,800       Books published as a result of research supported
                  by NEH Fellowships and Summer Stipends,
                  1967-2008

    800       NEH-funded fellowships at independent research
                  institutions, 2000-2009

      57       NEH-supported volumes of the Papers of
                  George Washington

      21       NEH-supported volumes of the documentary series
                  The Ratification of the Constitution and the Adoption
                  of the Bill of Rights