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NEH


For Individual Consultation with NEH Speaker, One page application required, see below.

logoFor Individual Consultation with Humanities Texas Speaker, Follow the NEH pre-proposal directions below, except for proposals appropriate to Humanities Texas.


Workshop on Getting a Grant from the
National Endowment for the Humanities

Wednesday, February 18, 2015
8:00 am - 12:30 pm
University of Houston
Alumni Center, Melcher Board Room, Cullen Blvd.

With individual consultations available after the workshop and
on the following day (February 19)


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On Wednesday, Feb 18, 2014 the University of Houston will host a workshop on applying for grant support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Anyone interested in learning about NEH funding opportunities and application strategies is welcome to attend this event. The workshop  will be conducted by Dr. Mark Silver, Senior Program Officer in the Research Division of the Endowment.  Individual meetings to discuss specific proposals are available on Wednesday afternoon following the public program and also on Thursday, Feb 19.  Pre-registration is required for the workshop and for individual meetings.

The first half of the workshop will provide an overview of NEH funding opportunities and offer tips for writing competitive proposals, focusing especially on NEH Fellowships, Summer Stipends, and Awards for Faculty at Hispanic-Serving Institutions and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (although those interested in other NEH programs will find that much of the advice applies.) The second half of the workshop will consist of a mock application review panel. Using actual NEH applications that will be made available in advance to all workshop participants, a mock panel of Univeristy of Houston faculty will read, discuss, and rank proposals following NEH's procedures in order to demonstrate  how applications are evaluated and recommended for NEH funding.

In addition to providing general information about all Endowment programs, Dr. Silver will be available to meet individually with prospective applicants. These sessions will be available to those who submit a one-page statement of their project in advance. While it is best to participate in the full workshop, you may schedule an individual appointment even if you cannot attend the main session. Appointments are available on Wednesday, February 18 from 2 to 5 pm and Thursday, February 19 from 8:30 am to 12 noon, and from1-4:30 pm. Each appointment will last 20 minutes.  The individual sessions will be in the Blomstrom Conference Room on the 2nd floor of the Alumni Center.

To request an individual meeting to discuss your project, please submit a one page project statement through this website.  When you submit, you will be asked for contact information and asked to express a preference for a meeting time.

Instructions for Pre-proposal Discussion Document

To request a personal appointment with the representative from the NEH, you are required to submit a one page pre-proposal document.  The purpose of this pre-proposal is to describe your project so that you can get feedback about how to write a more effective application.  The proposal should emphasize the intellectual significance of the project, and if possible you should tailor the proposal to a specific NEH grant program.  More information about NEH’s grant programs, including the dates for upcoming deadlines, is available at http://www.neh.gov/grants.

The pre-proposal may be single spaced, but the font should be no smaller than 12-point..  Please do not exceed one page.

If there are more requests than time slots available, The College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at University of Houston will evaluate the potential intellectual significance of the pre-proposals and their fit with NEH grant programs to allocate the slots to researchers.  We hope, however, to accommodate everybody.

The NEH representative, Mark Silver, will have read the pre-proposals before his meeting with you, and will give you feedback on how your project can better answer the evaluation criteria of the NEH, and thus increase its probability of being funded.  The deadline for submission of pre-proposal documents is 5pm, Feb 6, 2015, but you are urged to submit your pre-proposals earlier.

Dr. Mark Silver is the Asia specialist on the staff of NEH's Research Division. He works primarily in the Division's programs for individuals, including Fellowships, Summer Stipends, and Awards for Faculty (for which he is the team leader), but he also chairs review panels in the Collaborative Research and Scholarly Editions and Translations programs. Before joining the Endowment, he taught Japanese language and literature at Middlebury College, Connecticut College, and Colgate University. He has published reviews and peer-reviewed articles in the field of Japanese Studies, as well as a book entitled Purloined Letters: Cultural Borrowing and Japanese Crime Literature, 1868-1937 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008). He holds a Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Literatures from Yale University.