NEH Announces $34.79 Million for Humanities Projects

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has announced $34.79 million in grants for 97 humanities projects, many of which celebrate the nation’s upcoming 250th anniversary. 

Projects include the digital publication of the modernist poet Marianne Moore’s literary notebooks; the creation of an annotated digital edition of Walt Whitman’s journalistic writings; an open access edition of documents related to the naval history of the American Revolution; a digital edition of more than 13,000 speeches, letters, and other writings by Frederick Douglass; upgrades to storage conditions for the New Orleans Museum of Art’s collection of photographs from 1840 to the present day; and four one-hour films for the “Handiwork: Celebrating American Craft 2026” series.

This funding cycle also includes a special $10 million award to the University of Virginia to support expedited completion of editorial work on papers related to the Declaration of Independence, American Revolution, and Founding Era. The project responds to President Donald Trump’s executive order regarding “celebrating America’s birthday,” and is part of the NEH’s A More Perfect Union initiative “focused on exploring America’s story and celebrating its 250 years of cultural heritage,” according to a press release. The $10 million grant serves as the largest ever awarded by the NEH.

Beyond this, the NEH has dedicated 19 grants for summer institutes and workshops, each intended to provide professional enrichment and research opportunities for K–12 educators and college faculty on topics such as the history of Florida’s “Space Coast,” Emily Dickinson’s poetry, and the cultural history of the Mississippi Delta. Additional funding will establish a research center at Baylor College of Medicine and Rice University to integrate humanities knowledge into the development of “trustworthy AI tools in the health sector.”

These new grants follow months of turmoil for the NEH, which, in April, slashed hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of previously awarded grants. A full list of new grants awarded by geographic location can be viewed here.