General Guidelines

Types of Grants and Deadlines

Humanities Disciplines

Who Can Apply & Project Formats

Application Process

Criteria for Review

Sample Publicity Plan

Application Budget Instructions

Approval

Grant Instructions and Application Forms:

Planning Grants

Major and Mini Grants

Teacher Incentive Grants

Research Fellowships

Congress defined the humanities as a set of academic disciplines when it established the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1965. These disciplines include, but are not necessarily limited to, the following fields:

• History
• Philosophy
• Language - both modern and classical
• Linguistics
• Literature
• Archaeology
• Jurisprudence
• Comparative religion
• Ethics
• History, criticism, and theory of the arts
• Those social sciences employing historical or philosophical approaches to their content. This may include cultural anthropology, sociology, political theory, international relations, and other subjects concerned with questions of human nature.
• The study and application of the humanities to the human environment with particular attention to reflecting our diverse heritage, traditions, and history and to the relevance of the humanities to the conditions of national life.

The humanities encompass both particular methods of inquiry (dialogue, historical and logical analysis) as well as particular bodies of knowledge such as history, philosophy, and literature.

THE ARTS AND THE SCIENCES VS. THE HUMANITIES

Since the arts and sciences and the humanities are so closely linked, it sometimes seems unclear what constitutes a humanities project. For purposes of project support, IHC makes these distinctions. IHC does not fund activities that chiefly involve the creation, exhibition, or performance of the arts. IHC might fund activities that focus on art history or criticism. The simple distinction is interpretation vs. performance or expression. Similarly, IHC does not fund science projects dealing with research or dissemination of scientific data, but might fund projects exploring the history of science, critically assessing scientific premises or findings, or examining the ethical considerations inherent in scientific discoveries or technological developments.