National Endowment Research Articles

Fostering financial literacy in children: a cornerstone for economic well-being

Today, education is the entire teaching of content that lacks an emphasis on learning financial knowledge. Financial literacy goes to its core so that early financial concepts can be laid down for children to be able to make better decision-making and healthy financial habits. This article thus traces the conditions of practical strategies, challenges, and wider issues while providing an extensive framework around the incorporation of financial literacy within early childhood education. Now, financial literacy is one of the most essential skills a human should possess under the 21st-century conditions that are poised to raise the bar for increasingly complex economies and individual success. The research thus dwells on the urgency of making financial education part of the formative years of children (National Endowment for Financial Education, 2020). It looks at the various benefits that come along with financial literacy, the various problems associated with its delivery, and, finally, the wider societal challenge. The essay goes on to relate theoretical paradigms with teaching approaches and policy recommendations to emphasize the importance of a collective endeavor in equipping children with the monetary capacity to manage an equitable, sustainable future.

Tracing policy change of the NEA in urban design through the advocacy coalition framework

ABSTRACT This article explores the evolution of federal arts policy in urban design by examining the Design Program of the National Endowment for the Arts through the Advocacy Coalition Framework. It traces major policy shifts and examines how policy coalitions influenced the U.S. arts-based urban design policy subsystem. The study utilizes a historical research approach and secondary data analysis to analyze the NEA's policy interventions from their early stages to the present Creative Placemaking movement. The analysis reveals how external events, policy beliefs, and coalition dynamics have shaped policy changes. Findings demonstrate the complex interplay between policy actors and their environments, highlighting the critical role of advocacy coalitions in developing and evolving arts policies in urban contexts. This research underscores the dynamic nature of policymaking and the significant impact of arts-led policy advocacy on shaping urban design.

Teaching Historical Approaches to Public Health Educators: Lessons Learned from an Interprofessional Workshop

This article describes a National Endowment for the Humanities-funded Institute “Disease, Pandemics, and Public Health in the United States” held in the summer of 2023 on the campus of The Ohio State University. It discusses how the institute was developed, its content, and its pedagogical impact. This institute offered training in how to integrate a historical perspective into public health pedagogy for 30 instructors of varied rank from a range of academic institutions. More importantly, the institute established a long-lasting pedagogical community that continues to foster innovation in public health pedagogy long after the completion of the formal program. While the institute focused on pandemics in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, in this article we argue that this institute provides a powerful roadmap for meaningful interdisciplinary training that enables public health educators to effectively integrate historical methods, perspectives, and knowledge into their pedagogy in response to growing calls for greater historicization of contemporary threats to public health.

National Endowment for the Arts' Big Read grants

National Endowment for the Arts' Big Read grants

The National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships (1965-2024)

This dataset contains a comprehensive list of the writers sponsored by these NEA fellowships from the organization’s founding to 2024, including information about those writers’ demographics, education, and geography.

Infrastructures of Repair

Abstract The future of public humanities will be determined by the infrastructural investments that support its continued development. These include, in the context of the United States, increased federal funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities; a serious re-engagement in the material support of new humanities scholarly production by private foundations; and a focused effort by humanities organizations to cultivate philanthropic donors. This manifesto argues that the humanities are the rightful inheritance of every person, regardless of background or position. If we are to take seriously both the resource needs of humanities research—which demand that funds be allocated for highly trained scholars to read, interpret, authenticate, preserve, and circulate primary source material—and the idea that no one has a higher claim than anyone else to these sources and processes and the insights they yield—which demands that individuals outside of the academy explicitly experience them selves as equal participants in the humanities—then our approach to both research infrastructure and public engagement must radically shift to emphasize repair. Repair, here, is the interpersonal, intellectual, strategic, repetitious, time-intensive work of ensuring that every individual can claim this rightful cultural inheritance. It is the work of creating the conditions for encounters between individuals and the vastness of history, culture, and difference. The future of public humanities must be in the creation of replicable models for these encounters, in the knowledge that in every instance, the work of the humanities is and must be unreproducible.

An Interview with National Leaders in the Arts and Humanities

Abstract The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH) has played a significant role in American government since its establishment by President Reagan in 1982. Although not part of the President’s Cabinet, the PCAH serves as an advisory body directly appointed by the president to support and promote arts and humanities across the nation. Despite its non-partisan mission, the PCAH has not been immune to political turmoil. In 2017, following President Trump’s controversial comments on the Charlottesville violence, the PCAH members resigned en masse, leading to the committee’s temporary disbandment. President Biden reinstated the PCAH in 2022, emphasizing its importance in fostering civic engagement, social cohesion, and equity through the arts and humanities. This article features an interview with current PCAH members, including National Endowment for the Humanities Chair Shelly C. Lowe, Oscar- and Tony-award winner and PCAH Co-Chair Bruce Cohen, and PCAH member and interdisciplinary artist Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya. The discussion highlights their personal and professional journeys within the arts and humanities, underscoring the profound impact of cultural experiences on their lives. They advocate for continued government support, citing the arts and humanities as essential for a functioning democracy.

Creating a Public Database of Slaving Voyages across the Indian Ocean and Asia

This article describes a major new initiative funded by a grant from the United States National Endowment for the Humanities to identify slaving voyages by Arab, Chinese, European, Indian, Southeast Asian, Swahili, and other vessels in the Indian Ocean and Asia and add them to the existing SlaveVoyages website. The article argues that the new database is needed to expand our historical knowledge about slave trading as a global phenomenon by reconstructing the maritime commerce in slave and other forms of coerced labor in the Indian Ocean and maritime Asia in ways that will help historians and the public trace the movement and life histories of enslaved peoples within and beyond the Indian Ocean world. The article concludes with a call for collaboration from researchers who can identify and contribute new voyages to this important project.

The importance of humanities in a career-focused educational environment

This article addresses the role of the humanities in the context of professional degree programs that focus on technology, and shows how the humanities has enhanced career-oriented degree programs. As part of a larger college-wide initiative to develop interdisciplinary curricula, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded a grant to ***** College to both explore the relationship between the humanities and career-focused degree programs in STEM departments. This article describes the design and implementation of coursework that bridges the curricular gaps between humanities disciplines and technical or career-focused disciplines by bringing the humanities to bear on science and technology-oriented courses. If humanities appear as a body of knowledge, then they appear distinct from other disciplines. If humanities are viewed as conceptual frameworks that develop different modes of thinking, then the importance of the humanities to workforce development becomes clear.

Creative Forces programming with military families: Art therapy, dance/movement therapy, and music therapy brief vignettes

LAY SUMMARY Creative arts therapists (art therapists, dance/movement therapists, and music therapists) administer assessments and interventions that support the holistic well-being of military families affected by traumatic brain injury (TBI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Through participation in the Creative Forces: United States National Endowment for the Arts Military Healing Arts Network, military families discovered strengths, inspired connections, and improved understanding of their relationships. Creative arts therapies (CATs) motivated engagement, which ultimately boosted family resilience. CATs are an integral part of interdisciplinary care to address behavioural and rehabilitative conditions of military families impacted by TBI and PTSD. Future research should examine the efficacy of creative arts therapies in improving resilience in military families.

Exploring the nexuses between carbon dioxide emissions, material footprints and human development: An empirical study of 151 countries

In order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, it is necessary to actively promote a coordinated and balanced relationship between carbon dioxide emissions (CO2e), material footprints (MF) and human development, based on the economic and social development stages of different countries and their material resource endowments. However, the existing research results lack cross-country comparisons and overly focus on the single conclusion of quantifying decoupling while ignoring the impact of coupling coordination nexus. Thus, this study comprehensively evaluated the nexus between CO2e, MF, and human development index (HDI) in 151 countries from 1990 to 2019 based on the modified coupling coordination degree model and the improved decoupling index model. The results show that, both the global MF per capita and HDI have maintained an increasing trend, and the MF per capita has been increasing significantly faster than the HDI. The trend of CO2e per capita is slowly dropping, with very high HDI countries being the main contributors. Besides, global regional differences in CO2e per capita and MF per capita are still expanding. Worldwide differences in per unit of CO2e and per unit of MF for HDI variation are narrowing. Furtherly, there is a more general but short-lived trend of absolute decoupling for very high HDI and low HDI countries, while medium HDI countries show a significant trend of coupling. By combining the endowment characteristics of some typical countries, it can be observed that the net fossil energy importing countries with higher HDI have high degree of coupling coordination, but gradually evolve towards the state of relative decoupling. There is still a significant trend of recoupling between the MF and HDI in the net fossil energy exporting countries with higher HDI, but CO2e is gradually evolving towards decoupling. The coupling coordination state is deepening in some low HDI countries. Due to the huge differences in national endowment characteristics and development stages, targeted energy conservation and emission reduction strategies are important for achieving coordinated development between CO2e, MF and HDI.

National Endowment for the Arts taking grant applications for ‘creative placemaking’ projects

National Endowment for the Arts taking grant applications for ‘creative placemaking’ projects

Where to Start: Creating a Roadmap for Collection Storage Planning Through a Collaborative Values-Based Approach: A National Endowment for the Humanities Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections project at The New York Public Library

Collection storage is one of the most complex collaborations a museum, library, or archive can undertake. A high-level initial assessment can help overcome the inertia and complexity that overwhelms larger organizations due to the number of stakeholders, spaces, and collections. Large institutions need to rise above room-level preservation issues and focus on global, values-based thinking. With support from the Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections (SCHC) program of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), The Research Libraries of the New York Public Library (NYPL) designed a collaborative pre-planning exercise to inform long-range collection storage planning for over fifty storage areas within its Manhattan research centers. Pulling together experts in architecture, preservation environment, and sustainability to review NYPL’s storage needs in collaboration with an internal team of stakeholders, the project established foundations for ongoing values-based collaborative planning. Project design and considerations on synthesizing observations into recommendations are discussed in this article.

Case study: The Historic Media Collection at Seattle Art Museum

The Historic Media Collection in the Seattle Art Museum’s Research Libraries & Archives is a unique collection of exclusively audiovisual materials that tell the history of the institution from its founding in 1933 up to 2019. With approximately 3,000 unique items on physical legacy formats of film, video and audio, establishing the collection and making it available to museum staff and researchers has been a long and ongoing journey. With the recent award from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the digitisation, preservation and access to these materials has been prioritised. This paper provides a brief history of the collection along with a more in-depth look at the challenges and considerations in selecting a digital asset management system appropriate for the collection.

Is Literature Still the “Heart” of English?

Drawing on a 2023 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers on the history of literature instruction, the authors reflect on the traditional place of literature at the “heart” of English education, arguing for the continuing importance of centering students’ experiences with texts.

Democracy in Divided Societies: Electoral Engineering for Conflict Management “Chapter 3 Centripetal Incentives and Political Engineering in Australia”

Benjamin Reilly is a professor of political science and international relations at the University of Western Australia. Benjamin previously served as dean of the Sir Walter Murdoch School and was director of the Centre for democratic institutions at the Australian National University (ANU). Benjamin is also an expert in the Australian government, the United Nations, and other international organizations. As a professor of political science, Benjamin was invited to various scientific forums to speak at well-known campuses, such as Harvard, Oxford, and Johns Hopkins. Publicizing scientific papers and books earned Benjamin numerous international grants from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the United StatesInstitute of Peace, the East-West Center, the National Endowment for Democracy, and the Australian Research Council. Benjamin’s ideas and thoughts were widely published in various international and national newspapers, including the New York Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Time Magazine.

Manufacturing Industry Resource Endowment Index and Its Big Data Model

This study aims to demonstrate the application of big data models in the evaluation of manufacturing competitiveness across different countries and economic entities. It involves analyzing algorithms and data structures, designing algorithms for evaluating manufacturing competitiveness suitable for different countries and economic entities, and providing algorithmic and theoretical support for building computer assessment models for manufacturing competitiveness in economic entities. The research adopts qualitative and quantitative methods, comparing and analyzing empirical data on manufacturing resource endowment and competitiveness in various countries, combining theoretical analysis and empirical data. By conducting a literature review and empirical research, relevant information and data are collected to establish the relationship between manufacturing resource endowment index and competitiveness. Through case studies and comparative research, this study explores the main factors affecting manufacturing competitiveness in different countries and their interrelationships. It confirms that the competitiveness of manufacturing industries in different countries is influenced by factors such as resource endowment. Further analysis quantifies the relationship between national manufacturing resource endowment and competitiveness, leading to the design of computer algorithms, data structures, and processing logic. The results demonstrate the significant role of resource endowment in manufacturing competitiveness, serving as a crucial basis for formulating comprehensive national strategies. The innovations of this study include: 1. Introducing the manufacturing resource endowment index as a key variable for evaluating competitiveness, enriching the content of competitiveness big data models. 2. Designing comprehensive data structures, algorithms, and processing logic for assessing manufacturing competitiveness from multiple perspectives. 3. In-depth analysis of the relationship and analytical methods between manufacturing strategies, resource endowment, and competitiveness, providing theoretical and model references for the design of computer big data operation platforms.

National Endowment for the Arts' Challenge America grants

National Endowment for the Arts' Challenge America grants

Examining cultural policy shifts in response to the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT This study examines the evolving role of governments in cultural policy implementation in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States before, during, and after the COVID-19 crisis. The findings reveal distinct cultural policy frameworks before the pandemic, influenced by the unique path dependency of each country. However, in response to the crisis, these countries have converged, experiencing increased government intervention to address national challenges. Notably, the United States, contrary to past efforts, has augmented support for the arts, particularly through the National Endowment for the Arts. The research aims to offer comparative insights into cultural policy during national crises, offering practical lessons for countries facing similar institutional and circumstantial conditions.

U.S. SUPPORT FOR DEMOCRATIC VALUES IN UKRAINE: THE INSTITUTIONAL DIMENSION

The purpose of this article is to analyze the role of U.S. governmental and non-governmental institutions in supporting democratic values in Ukraine following Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. It examines how American assistance has contributed to preserving Ukraine’s democratic governance, sovereignty, and political freedoms during the Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict (war). The article also provides an overview of key U.S. institutions and organizations that have actively supported Ukraine’s democratic aspirations through financial aid, technical assistance, and institutional reforms. The methodological basis of the study includes a thorough review of publications from the websites of relevant organizations and agencies, official reports and news for 2022–2024. The research also draws on analytical works from prominent U.S. think tanks, including the Brookings Institution and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, alongside data from surveys conducted by the National Democratic Institute and Razumkov Center. Comparative analysis and case studies are used to assess the feasibility of U.S. support in areas like anti-corruption initiatives, civil society development, and local governance reforms. The scientific novelty of the article lies in its holistic approach to understanding the diverse dimensions of U.S. support for democratic values in Ukraine. Unlike previous studies, which focus on specific aspects of U.S.–Ukraine cooperation, this research presents a comprehensive examination of how American institutions, including the U.S. Department of State, USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) etc. are making efforts to strengthen democracy in Ukraine during the war. The author concludes that U.S. assistance is important for Ukraine’s democratic foundations. However, it has not yet addressed such problems as the decline in Ukrainians’ trust in government institutions, which underscores the need for continued efforts to increase transparency, anti-corruption measures, and accountability to bring Ukraine closer to European standards in the long run.