Visiting Assistant Professor of English Awarded NEH Enduring Questions Grant

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Padma Viswanathan

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Padma Viswanathan, visiting assistant professor of English in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, was awarded the National Endowment of the Humanities Enduring Questions grant.

The Enduring Questions program supports faculty members in the teaching and development of new courses that foster intellectual community through the study of an enduring question that is a fundamental concern of human life addressed by the humanities. The course is meant to engage faculty and students in critical thinking and to join together in a deep and sustained program of reading in order to encounter influential thinkers over the centuries and into the present day.

Viswanathan's course proposal, "Can Good Books Make Us Better People? Our search, in stories, for how to be," explores the relationship between literature and morality, with students writing fiction in response to literature covering a wide scope of time, culture and genre.

In the past five years, the Enduring Questions grant program has received around 200 submissions per year with an average of 19 new courses funded annually.

Viswanathan has written several books including The Toss of a Lemon, which was published in eight countries, a bestseller in three and a finalist for the Commonwealth First Book Prize, the Amazon.ca First Novel Prize and the Pen Center USA Fiction Prize. She will read from her latest book, The Ever After of Ashwin Rao at 4 p.m. Saturday, May 10, at Nightbird Books in Fayetteville.

For more information about the Enduring Questions grants program visit the National Endowment for the Humanities website.