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Prizes and Grants: Community Partnership Grant Program
Community Partnership Grant Program Existing Projects
Introduction and Details | Application Form | Existing Projects | Resources
“Promoting Service Learning in American Studies: A Collaborative Student Internship Project with the New Mexico Office of the State Historian”
The American Studies Department at the University of New Mexico’s grant will establish a number of paid internships for undergraduate and graduate students in the Department of American Studies. Interns will serve in the Office of the State Historian conducting research, interpretation, and content development, gaining skill in archival research, methodology and document preservation, technology and media-assisted dissemination of cultural materials, and insight into community-based history projects.
“Summer in the City: An Exhibit Celebrating Arbor Hill Youth Accomplishments.”
The project, sponsored by the College of St. Rose in Albany, NY, celebrates the accomplishments of young people in Arbor Hill by exhibiting works they created during the summer of 2004. As a predominantly African American neighborhood, Albany’s Arbor Hill has been shaped by many of the forces that characterize African American life in the United States. Stories of resistance, migration, racial violence, spiritual resilience, de facto segregation, cultural innovation, economic exploitation, political militancy, and family bonds contribute to understanding Arbor Hill in the past and in the present. Although children and young people who participated in the “Summer in the City” project may not have explicitly articulated their lives and concerns using the concepts mentioned above, their lives are nevertheless affected by the political, social, economic, and cultural realities that have defined Black experience in the United States. Many of the works that the participants created portray, comment upon, and interrogate their own African American urban experience. The project brought American Studies practitioners into the community, working to uncover, preserve, and increase knowledge of diverse cultural heritages.
Clay County, Minnesota Web Museum
This ASA grant has enabled the creation of an online museum composed of exhibits created as independent research projects by American Studies students at Minnesota State University Moorhead. The online museum uses materials and artifacts from the Clay County Historical Society’s Museum and Archives. The Historical Society has thousands of items that it can not display regularly. This online museum is intended to be an alternative display site so that more material from the Collection, and far more people, can access it. A final report (PDF) on this project, written by project director Dr. Helen Sheumaker, offers a fine example of this part of the project.
Making History: A Pedagogical Preservation Partnership
This partnership brings together Purdue University faculty from American Studies, English, Sociology, History, and the Library, the director and archivist of the Tippecanoe County Historical Association, as well as graduate students taking the course “Archive Theory and Practice”. The partnership considers conceptual, theoretical, and practical issues surrounding the creation and use of archives, and addresses questions such as: Why are some items saved and others not? How are collections organized and described? What can be learned about past times and what eludes us, given uneven archiving practices? What ethical matters and professional practices govern who can gain access to and use fragile remains of the past? Grant monies assist in developing faculty expertise and interest in archival research courses, and in the public dissmination of student work from those courses.
Historic Fountain Square: Past Present and Future
This project focuses on the Fountain Square neighborhood of Indianapolis in order to document the “common lives” of its residents, to discover the historical trends that shaped the community, and to investigate the social forces that are transforming the community today. The project has created a web site that fosters an appreciation of local history through the active involvement of Fountain Square residents. Student research will be presented to the community both on the web site and in poster sessions at the Fountain Square branch of the Indianapolis Public Library.
“Living Traditions: A How-To Guide for Teaching Texas Folklore”
This partnership grant allowed Neill Hadder and Cory Lock to revise and prepare for web publication “Living Traditions: A How-To Guide for Teaching Texas Folklore,” Texas Folklife Resource’s folklore curriculum for fourth through eighth grade classrooms. Further, in sponsoring their work in the nonprofit sector, the ASA Community Partnership Grant gave Hadder and Lock the opportunity to apply their academic training to local community issues, an experience invaluable to both of them as they neared the completion of their doctoral programs.
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