In 2015, the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences hosted the Regional National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grants workshop on February 18-19. The goal of the two-day workshop was to provide insights and strategies for submitting strong applications. 

As a result, CLASS professors have successfully captured some of those very competitive grants, including Dr. Julie Tolliver, assistant professor of French and Francophone Studies in the department of Modern and Classical Languages, who was selected recently as a grant recipient by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for her research project, A Poetics of Solidarity in Francophone Independence Literatures.

Dr. Tolliver’s research project argues that the solidarity linking intellectuals from different regions from the 1950s through 70s, what she calls the “independence era,” helped create new political and artistic possibilities. As intellectuals from French colonies imagined alternatives to colonial and neo-colonial situations, their texts—essays, manifestos, novels, short stories, plays, films—became blueprints for thinkers in other parts of the world.

Dr. Tolliver now is among the most recent CLASS NEH grant award recipients including Dr. Lynn Voskuil, associate professor of English; Dr. Todd Romero, associate professor of History; Dr. Monica Perales, associate professor of History; Dr. Richard Mizelle, associate professor of History; Dr. Nancy Beck Young, professor of History and Dr. Leandra Zarnow, assistant professor of History.

- Toni Mooney Smith