Faculty Team Awarded NEH Humanities Connections Grant

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded Emerson College a NEH Humanities Connections Planning Grant to develop a new interdisciplinary undergraduate major in climate and sustainability communication.

On April 16, the NEH announced $26.2 million for 238 humanities projects nationwide. These awards will support the preservation of historical collections, humanities exhibitions and documentaries, scholarly research, and curriculum projects. Emerson’s grant fits into the last category. The Humanities Connections program seeks to expand the role of the humanities in undergraduate education by encouraging partnerships between humanities faculty and their counterparts in other areas of study. This year, the Humanities Connections program received 106 applications and made 18 awards totaling $1.7 million.

Emerson received $49,978 to further develop an interdisciplinary, dynamic, and experiential undergraduate major in climate and sustainability communication. Four Emerson faculty representing the Marlboro Institute, the School of Communications and the School of the Arts are overseeing this one-year project which will bring together faculty from across the college to work on curriculum development and experiential learning in relation to communication around climate and sustainability, as well as student focus groups that will convene this fall. The project will culminate in the submission of a new major proposal to the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee next spring.

The four faculty co-project directors are Nejem Raheem, Professor and Chair of the Marketing Communication department, Jon Honea, Associate Professor in the Marlboro Institute, Rituparna Mitra, Assistant Professor and postcolonial scholar in the Marlboro Institute, and Christine Casson, senior writer-in-residence in the department of Writing, Literature and Publishing.

This award is a significant recognition in the realm of the humanities. The National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency created in 1965, supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from across the U.S.

This is not the first time Emerson has received an NEH grant. However, it is the College’s first Humanities Connections grant in support of major curriculum development. This award recognizes the connectivity of the humanities and the liberal arts to Emerson’s historic strengths in communications and the arts.