Bridging Cultures: Planning and Implementation Grants for
Academic Forums and Program Development Workshops (NEH)

Due: June 1, 2010 for projects beginning August, 2010

http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/BridgingCultures.html

An NEH initiative on Bridging Cultures
In setting forth its vision for the National Endowment for the Humanities, Congress declared that “the humanities reflect the high place accorded by the American people to the nation’s rich cultural heritage and to the fostering of mutual respect for the diverse beliefs and values of all persons and groups.” To help Americans better understand our own rich cultural heritage, while enhancing public knowledge of and respect for others both here and abroad, NEH has launched a new initiative, called Bridging Cultures. The initiative encourages projects that explore the ways in which cultures from around the globe, as well as the myriad subcultures within America’s borders, have influenced American society. With the aim of revitalizing intellectual and civic life through the humanities, NEH welcomes projects that expand both scholarly and public discussion of diverse countries, peoples, and cultural and intellectual traditions worldwide.

Bridging Cultures grant opportunity
As part of its Bridging Cultures initiative, NEH welcomes proposals to plan and implement a program consisting of a forum and a workshop on one of two humanities themes: “Civility and Democracy” or “The Muslim World and the Humanities.”

Civility and Democracy
Civility has always served as a keystone in the American experiment, from George Washington’s “110 Rules of Civility,” to Abraham Lincoln’s appeal for “malice toward none” and “charity for all,” to Martin Luther King’s dream of the sons of former slaves and slave-owners being able “to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.” Civility involves our responsibilities to each other as citizens and as members of civil society. Drawing on diverse humanities disciplines—for example, political and cultural history, ethics or jurisprudence—civility might be examined in the following frameworks:

• the relationship of civility to the common good;
• the relationship between civility and democracy, at various points in time and across cultures;
• the sociological and cultural seedbeds of civility;
• the ways that civility has served, historically, to bridge cultural divides, both domestic and international.

The Muslim World and the Humanities
The history of the Muslim world is as complex and varied as the diverse nations and peoples who adhere to Islam across the globe. Recent cultural and political dynamics within Muslim countries have increasingly become a focus of scholarly research and public interest. At the same time, many in the public are unfamiliar with the multifaceted history of centuries of Islamic intellectual, political, and cultural traditions that have influenced civilizations throughout the world. The study of diverse humanities disciplines, from comparative literature to regional history, offers the opportunity to shed new light on the impact of Islam on the world and to broaden understanding across cultures. Many different approaches might be taken in exploring such topics from the perspective of humanities disciplines. Some possibilities include, by way of example only, an examination of

• the influence exerted by cultural developments originating in the Muslim world on the arts, the sciences, and literature elsewhere in the world;
• the commonalities uniting and the differences dividing Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, and the grounds for advancing mutual respect;
• the immigrant experiences of Muslims in the United States, spanning over two centuries of our nation’s history.

In exploring these or other themes, programs should expand public knowledge of the Muslim world, while fostering avenues for cross-cultural understanding.

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