Living Objects: African-American Puppetry

The University of Connecticut is hosting Living Objects, an exhibition, festival, and symposium on African-American puppetry.

Activities for the Living Objects: African American Puppetry Festival and Symposium will take place in various venues on UConn’s Storrs campus Feb. 8 to 10, with related festival events with UConn Hartford at the Hartford Public Library on Thursday, Feb. 7, 2019, and at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art on Saturday, Feb. 9, 2019.

Attendees have two options to participate in Living Objects Festival and Symposium events:

  1. Living Objects performances in Storrs and Hartford are open to the public. Individual tickets can be purchased at bimp.ticketleap.com.
  2. To attend all Living Objects Festival and Symposium events, including performances, panel discussions, film screenings, and more, registration is required. Registration can be completed at www.cvent.com/d/bbqbh7.

These events are part of the current Ballard Institute exhibition Living Objects: African American Puppetry, on display through April 7, 2019, which for the first time brings together historical and contemporary puppets, masks, and performing objects by African American artists and puppeteers. Many of the exhibition’s contributors, as well as scholars from around the United States, will come together at the festival and symposium to celebrate the past, present, and future of African American puppetry.

Exhibition co-curator Paulette Richards, a teaching artist and Fulbright Scholar, writes that “since their arrival in the Americas, African people have animated objects in a rich variety of forms and contexts, animating objects to represent their experiences and identity.” The Living Objects: African American Puppetry Festival and Symposium will highlight such work by contemporary African American artists, while also contextualizing the evolution of African American object performance.

Artists and puppeteers performing in the festival and symposium include Tarish “Jeghetto” Pipkins, Megan Piphus, Nehprii Amenii, Schroeder Cherry, David Liebe Hart, Dirk Joseph, Pandora Gastelum, Brad Brewer, Gabrielle Civil, Bruce Cannon, Nate Puppets, Yolanda Sampson, Edna Bland, and Paulette Richards.

NEH Reopens on Monday

Both the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) will reopen on Monday. While FY 2019 funding has yet to be resolved for the agencies and the partial government shutdown continues both agencies have identified administrative funds remaining for FY 2018 that will allow them to operate, and pay employees, for approximately four weeks. In a brief statement, the NEH announced that the agency “will prioritize the grant review process in order to minimize any interruption in the awarding of federal funding. Reopening now coincides with the critical workload in mid-January through February that is necessary to award the spring grants.”

Poster of young boy with gun for In the Crosshairs talk

In the Crosshairs: Dispatches from Central America 1983-1990

University of Connecticut, Storrs is hosting In the Crosshairs: Dispatches from Central American 1983-1990, featuring the photographs and field reports of Scott Wallace, February 15–March 15 at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.

A panel discussion featuring Wallace, Jon Lee Anderson of The New Yorker, photojournalist Robert Nickelsberg will be held on February 20, 4PM, at the Konover Auditorium.

Announcing the 2019 Mellon/ACLS Public Fellows Competition

The American Council of Learned Societies invites applications for the ninth competition of the Mellon/ACLS Public Fellows program. In 2019, the program will place up to 21 recent PhDs from the humanities and humanistic social sciences in two-year positions at participating nonprofits and government agencies. This career-launching initiative aims to demonstrate that the capacities developed in the advanced study of the humanities have wide application beyond the academy. The fellowship carries a stipend of $68,000 per year, as well as individual health insurance, a relocation allowance, and up to $3,000 in professional development funds.

This year, Public Fellows have the opportunity to join one of the following organizations:

  1. Alliance Theatre (Atlanta, GA) – Community Engagement & Audience Development Manager
  2. American Public Media (St. Paul, MN) – Senior Research Analyst
  3. Center for Court Innovation (New York, NY) – Communications Project Manager
  4. Chicago Humanities Festival (Chicago, IL) – Program Manager
  5. Citizens Committee for the Children of New York (New York, NY) – Policy & Budget Analyst
  6. Committee to Protect Journalists (New York, NY) – Research Manager
  7. Community Change (Washington, DC) – Policy Advisor
  8. Data & Society Research Institute (New York, NY) – Editor
  9. The German Marshall Fund of the United States (Washington, DC) – Program Officer
  10. Harriet Beecher Stowe Center (Hartford, CT) – Grants Manager
  11. Library of America (New York, NY) – Outreach Programs Manager
  12. National Conference of State Legislatures (Denver, CO) – Legislative Policy Specialist
  13. National Low Income Housing Coalition (Washington, DC) – Research Analyst
  14. Natural Resources Defense Council (Washington, DC) – Campaign Advocate, Latin America Project
  15. PEN America (New York, NY) – Festival Programs Manager
  16. Public Books (New York, NY) – Associate Editor
  17. Rare (Arlington, VA) – Community Engagement Manager
  18. Reinvestment Fund (Philadelphia, PA) – Policy Analyst
  19. Seattle Office for Civil Rights (Seattle, WA) – Senior Researcher
  20. San Francisco Arts Commission (San Francisco, CA) – Community Impact Analyst
  21. World Justice Project (Washington, DC) – Program Manager

Applicants to the Public Fellows program must have a PhD in the humanities or humanistic social sciences conferred between September 1, 2015 and June 21, 2019 and possess US citizenship or permanent resident status. Applicants must have defended and deposited their dissertations no later than April 5, 2019.

Further information about the application process and this year’s positions is available at www.acls.org/programs/publicfellowscomp/. Please do not contact any of the host organizations directly. All applications must be submitted through ACLS’s online application system (ofa.acls.org) by 9 pm EDT on March 13, 2019.

NEHC Announces Seed Grant Opportunity for Humanities Research

New England Humanities Consortium

Requests for Proposals

Guidelines and Application

NEHC Mission and Overview

The New England Humanities Consortium (NEHC) promotes and strengthens intellectual collaboration, interdisciplinary exchange, and innovative educational, intercultural, and curricular programming among New England Humanities centers and institutes, and the faculty, students, and regional, national, and global communities they serve. NEHC includes: Amherst College, Colby College, Dartmouth College, Northeastern University, Tufts University, the University of Connecticut, the University of New Hampshire, the University of Rhode Island, the University of Vermont, Wellesley College, and Wheaton College. The Humanities Institute of the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut is the executive and administrative hub of the NEHC through 2020.

Award Description

The New England Humanities Consortium (NEHC) is offering competitive seed grants for research initiatives in the humanities that seek to capitalize on the collaborative network of the consortium. Awards of up to $9,500 will be made. (For projects whose budgets exceed $9500 applicants must list additional committed funding sources and amounts.)  Priority will be given to applications demonstrating concrete plans for consortium membership involvement. Such involvement can take different forms, but will typically involve, e.g. direct collaboration between two or more member institutions and/or active and solicitation of faculty, staff, or students exclusively from member institutions. Applications are welcome from individuals or teams, but the PI must be on the faculty of a NEHC member institution. Potential areas of funding interest include the following (this list is by no means exhaustive):

  • Collaborative research projects
  • Summer Seminars
  • Study or Working groups
  • Shared Speakers
  • Collaborative course design
  • Exhibitions

Please submit materials electronically in pdf or Word docx to YOUR HUMANITIES CENTER or INSTITUTE DIRECTOR BY MARCH 25, 2019. (They will then pass along the proposal to the NEHC board.)

Application Procedure and Timeline

Awards are made in April and October of each year.

Applying for the NEHC RFP requires the following:

  1. Cover page (1 page) stating
  • Title of the project
  • Name, department/program/school location, and NEHC school representation of PI(s)
  • Requested NEHC funding amount (Awards of up to $9500)
  1. Project narrative (2 pages, single spaced, 1” margins, 12 pt font) detailing the
  • Goals of the project
  • How those goals address those of NEHC.
  • Plans for involving NEHC member institutions and which institutions in particular will be involved
  • How those goals will be pursued
  • Names and roles of participants
  • Expected outcomes and/or deliverables
  • Plans for seeking external funding if any
  • Project timeline describing completion of project goals and outcomes
  1. CV (2 page) of Principal Investigator(s)
  2. Budget and Award Period:
  • Total budget.  (For projects whose budgets exceed $9500, please list additional committed funding sources and amounts, as indicated by an attached letter of support.)
  • The award period will typically not exceed one (1) calendar year and should be stated in the application timeline.
  • The awardees will be required to submit a detailed summary of the project at the end of their funding term.
  • Please note in budgeting no indirects are permitted.

Reporting Requirements

All PIs will be required to submit a two-page report no more than (1) month after the end of the award period as specified in the award letter. The report should detail and substantiate progress on the following elements of the project:

  • The extent to which project goals have been met
  • Specific indicators or signs of success
  • Outcomes and/or deliverables achieved
  • Number of NEHC member institutions (and faculty/students) involved

Questions and requests for more information are encouraged and should be directed to uchi@uconn.edu.

Revised: 4/17/2019

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