Arts & Humanities

UArizona may submit one institutional application, per cycle, to any “arts learning” program.

M. Klotz

UA anticipates nominating one Junior Scholar and one Senior Scholar. UA anticipates a sponsor deadline of November 14, 2021. Updated guidelines will be posted once released by the sponsor.

In the previous cycle, there were four broad topic areas that include a wide range of suggested subtopics:

• Strengthening U.S. democracy and exploring new narratives
• Technological and cultural creativity—potential and perils
• Global connections and global ruptures
• Environments, natural and human

RDS anticipates similar topic areas for the 2022 program. Topic areas will be updated once announced by the sponsor.

How is a Junior Scholar defined for this opportunity?

The sponsor has previously defined a junior scholar as someone who received his/her Ph.D. within the last ten years. A junior scholar may hold any title, e.g., assistant professor or associate professor. The “junior” status is determined by the year in which his/her terminal degree was earned.

Senior: M. Nassar
Junior: E. Plemons

UArizona may submit one institutional application, per cycle, to any “arts learning” program.

M. Klotz

UArizona may submit one application.

Through a gift from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Library will support a multiyear initiative that entails public participation in the creation of archival collections. Specifically, the Library of Congress seeks to award grants to support contemporary cultural documentation focusing on the culture and traditions of diverse, often underrepresented communities in the United States. These projects will result in archival collections preserved at the American Folklife Center and made accessible through the Library of Congress’ web site. The major goals of this grant program are to enable communities to document their cultural life and experiences from their own perspectives, while enriching the Library’s holdings with diverse materials featuring creativity and knowledge found at the local level. As such, successful applications will come from individuals closely affiliated with the community they propose to document.

J. Lee

UArizona may submit one institutional application. The institutional application will be coordinated by Andrew Schulz, Vice President for the Arts.

Independent Components are eligible to submit separately.

Applicants may request a fixed grant amount for: $50,000, $100,000 or $150,000. Cost share/matching funds are not required. A grant period of up to two years is allowed.

Grants will be made to eligible organizations to support their own operations. Unlike other Arts Endowment funding programs that offer project-based support, Rescue Plan funds are intended to support day-to-day business expenses/operating costs, and not specific programmatic activities. Cost share/matching funds are not required.

Support is limited to any or all of the following:

• Salary support, full or partial, for one or more staff positions. Staff positions funded may not conduct work independent of the organization receiving funds.
• Fees/stipends for artists and/or contractual personnel to support the services they provide for specific activities as part of organizational operations.
  • Artist fees/stipends should be related to work with a tangible outcome, such as performances, presentations, workshops, and/or the creation of artwork. This is considered a stipend to the artist for the work undertaken during the period of performance. Such work must not be performed independently of the organization receiving funds.
• Facilities costs such as mortgage principal, rent, and utilities.
• Costs associated with health and safety supplies for staff and/or visitors/audiences (e.g., personal protective equipment, cleaning supplies, hand sanitizer, etc.).
• Marketing and promotion costs.

Rescue Plan funds may be used to support existing jobs, new jobs, or to restore jobs that were furloughed or eliminated due to the pandemic.

Arizona State Museum IC: L. Falk
University of Arizona Museum of Art IC: J. McCleary

UArizona may nominate one candidate.

Serious interdisciplinary research often requires established scholar-teachers to pursue formal substantive and methodological training in addition to the PhD. New Directions Fellowships assist faculty members in the humanities and humanistic social sciences who seek to acquire systematic training outside their own areas of special interest.

The program is intended to enable scholars in the humanities to work on problems that interest them most, at an appropriately advanced level of sophistication. In addition to facilitating the work of individual faculty members, these awards should benefit scholarship in the humanities more generally by encouraging the highest standards in cross-disciplinary research.

Eligible candidates will be faculty members who were awarded a doctorate in the humanities or humanistic social sciences within the last six to twelve years and whose research interests call for formal training in a discipline other than the one in which they are expert.

A. Park

No applicants.

No applicants // Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1 


UArizona may submit only one application to this opportunity. Independent Components are not eligible to submit separately due to the following language in the solicitation:

Eligibility of Museums Located within a Parent Organization
A museum located within a parent organization that is a State, local, or tribal government or multipurpose nonprofit entity, such as a municipality, university, historical society, foundation, or cultural center, may apply on its own behalf if the museum:

• is able to independently fulfill all the eligibility requirements listed in the above three criteria;
• functions as a discrete unit within the parent organization;
• has its own fully segregated and itemized operating budget; and
• has the authority to make the application on its own.

When any of the last three conditions cannot be met, a museum may only apply through its parent organization.

Proposals to this grant program may continue, enhance, or expand existing programs and services, or they may launch new ones to address emergent needs and unexpected hardships. Reflecting IMLS’s goals of championing lifelong learning, strengthening community engagement, and advancing collections stewardship and access, successful projects for this grant program will:

• Advance digital inclusion through approaches that may include, but are not limited to, improving digital platforms, online services, connectivity (e.g., hotspots), and creating digital literacy programs, as well as creating new processes and procedures needed to sustain a robust online environment.
• Support hiring new staff and training or retraining existing staff to ensure a workforce that has the appropriate knowledge, skills, and abilities.
• Build community-focused partnerships, networks, and alliances with organizations with an emphasis on complementing, rather than duplicating, resources and services.
• Support the creation and delivery of online and in-person educational, interpretive, and experiential programs and exhibitions for learners of all ages.
• Provide trusted spaces for community engagement and dialogue to foster recovery and rebuilding.
• Support efforts to collect, preserve, manage, and interpret documentary sources and tangible objects representing all aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic experience.

No applicants.

No applicants // Limit: 2 // Tickets Available: 2 

Our Town is the National Endowment for the Arts’ creative placemaking grants program. Through project-based funding, it supports projects that integrate arts, culture, and design activities into efforts that strengthen communities by advancing local economic, physical, and/or social outcomes.

Successful Our Town projects ultimately lay the groundwork for systems changes that sustain the integration of arts, culture, and design into local strategies for strengthening communities. These projects require a partnership between a local government entity and nonprofit organization, one of which must be a cultural organization; and should engage in partnership with other sectors (such as agriculture and food, economic development, education and youth, environment and energy, health, housing, public safety, transportation, and workforce development). Cost-share/matching grants range from $25,000 to $150,000, with a minimum cost share/match equal to the grant amount.

No applicants.

UArizona may nominate two applicants.

The National Endowment for the Humanities’ Summer Stipends program aims to stimulate new research in the humanities and its publication. The program works to accomplish this goal by:

• Providing small awards to individuals pursuing advanced research that is of value to humanities scholars, general audiences, or both.
• Supporting projects at any stage of development, but especially early-stage research and late-stage writing in which small awards are most effective
• Furthering the NEH’s commitment to diversity and inclusion in the humanities by encouraging applications from independent scholars and faculty at Hispanic Serving Institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities, and community colleges.

Summer Stipends support continuous full-time work on a humanities project for a period of two consecutive months.  NEH funds may support recipients’ compensation, travel, and other costs related to the proposed scholarly research.

L. Darling
J. Rosenblatt