Humanities Center grant proposal deadline is April 1

	Edurne Portela is the director of the Humanities Center.

When Edurne Portela took over as director of Lehigh’s Humanities Center last fall, she was excited to expand the center’s offerings and award research grants to both students and faculty.
Now, faculty and graduate students in the humanities are able to apply for such grants for summer 2009, but with one caveat: recipients must share their intellectual gains through workshops or presentations at the Humanities Center.
“The grants will create the opportunity for both faculty and graduate students to expose their work to an interdisciplinary audience, thus allowing the exchange of ideas and realization of synergies among disciplines,” says Portela, assistant professor of Spanish in the modern languages and literature department. She says the grants will also benefit the intellectual life at Lehigh University.
Faculty members in the humanities may apply for one of two $6,000 grants designed to provide support for faculty to develop a research project or creative activity of humanistic inquiry.
Projects might include but are not limited to essays, books, musical compositions, novels, poems, or art pieces. All full-time faculty members in humanities departments, regardless of rank, are eligible to apply. Recipients will commit to share outcome during fall 2009 in the form of a reading, workshop, exhibition, or any other interaction that would lead to a meaningful exchange.
Graduate students in the humanities are also eligible for one $4,000 summer grant which will provide support for one advanced ABD (all-but-dissertation) student in either English or History. The recipient will be asked to demonstrate his/her progress in fall 2009 by giving a presentation on the aspect in which his/her dissertation developed.
“These grants will raise the reputation of the Humanities Center as an institute that promotes scholarship and, in turn, of Lehigh University as an institution that values and actively supports research in the Humanities,” says Portela.
Grant proposals are due April 1, with grant awardees announced April 15. For more information on both the student and faculty grant requirements as well as information on how to apply, please visit the Humanities Center Web site.
--Tricia Long