American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Announce Awardees For Its 2020 Digital Extension Grants Program

From ACLS:

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is pleased to announce awardees for its 2020 Digital Extension Grants program.

“At a time when difficult but much needed conversations are dominating the national discourse and as we continue to traverse this new era of social distancing, ACLS is proud to support advances in digital research and scholarly communication that can contribute positively on both fronts,” said ACLS President Joy Connolly. “Thanks to the generosity of the Mellon Foundation, these vital, cutting-edge projects will pursue important research while expanding access to digital resources among a variety of new communities. This program exemplifies our commitment to serving a broad spectrum of learners and diversifying humanistic scholarship.”

Now in its fifth year, the program fosters team-based collaboration among scholars at all career stages and expands opportunities for scholarly engagement with the digital humanities. The grants of up to $150,000 advance established digital initiatives at colleges and universities and extend their reach to new communities of users. The program is made possible by the support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

This year’s funded projects aim to significantly broaden digital archives, research capacities, and access to knowledge, connecting scholars around the world with illuminating cultural resources. Among the projects pursued by this year’s grantees are an extension of a national digital portal for Mexican-American art with more than 7,500 assets; an expansion of the Intra-American Slave Trade Database with data and materials on 19^th century forced movement of enslaved people born in America, as well as lesson plans to help K-12 and university instructors incorporate the database into curricula; and a build-out of the content and user community of the World History Commons, adding new contributions by early career scholars and working with community colleges across the United States to incorporate the platform into their world history curricula.

Projects Awarded Funding 2020

• Citations: The Renaissance Imitation Mass
• Designing Tools for the Boas/Hunt 1897 Digital Edition: Extending the RavenSpace/Scalar Collaborative Publishing Platform to Support Critical Editions in Indigenous Studies
• Expanding the Commons: Supporting Emerging World History Scholars and Community Colleges through the World History Commons OER
• Expansion of the Intra-American Slave Trade Database
• Generative Rhizomes: Extending Digital Discovery of Mexican American Art
• Optimizing Crowdsourced Transcription using Handwritten Text Recognition

Direct to List of Awardees, Project Info/Abstracts

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