University of Arkansas Professor Wins NEH Funding

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Beth Schweiger

Beth Schweiger, associate professor of history in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, won a 2012-13 Fellowship from National Endowment for the Humanities to work on her next book which is under contract with Yale University Press.

“The National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship is among the most prestigious and competitive awards in the academy,” said Lynda Coon, chair of the department of history. “We are all exceptionally pleased for professor Schweiger. The 2012-13 NEH is but another testimony of the high visibility of the historians of Fulbright College on the national stage of scholarship.”

Schweiger is a social and cultural historian of the early United States who focuses on the South. She joined the faculty at the University of Arkansas in 2000, and has published two books focusing on religion and the South.

“I am thrilled and honored to have received the fellowship, and I am grateful to Dean Robin Roberts and Provost Sharon Gaber for their generous support for my leave so that I can complete my book,” Schweiger said.

Schweiger will use the year as an NEH fellow to complete her book, The Literate South: Reading and Freedom in the Early United States. This interdisciplinary scholarship uses the fields of anthropology, bibliography, historical linguistics, history of the book, social history and rhetoric in the examination of what free and enslaved Southerners read as well as how they used books in the decades before the Civil War. The National Endowment of the Humanities funds fewer than 10 percent of the proposals received each year. Its 2012-13 awards include a total of $56,156 to Arkansas projects, with $50,400 going to Schweiger and $5,756 to a storage and preservation project in Historic Washington State Park. Schweiger is one of only two professors in the Southeast Conference to receive the NEH fellowship.

About the National Endowment for the Humanities

Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at www.neh.gov.

About the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences

Fulbright College is the largest and most diverse academic unit on campus with 19 departments, 23 academic programs and 11 research centers. The college provides the core curriculum for all students attending the university and is named for J. William Fulbright, a former president of the university and longtime U.S. senator. Additional information about the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas is available at http://fulbright.uark.edu.

About the University of Arkansas History Department

The University of Arkansas department of history offers a wide range of area concentrations, including African, African-American, Asian, Classical, European, Gender, International, Latin American, Medieval and Renaissance, Middle East and Islamic, and Religious Studies. Additional information about the department of history and its programs is available at http://history.uark.edu.