NEH Awards UH Biggest Texas Grant This Funding Cycle

HOUSTON, TX, August 05, 2012 (Press-News.org) The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded Casey Due Hackney, professor and director of classical studies in the department of modern and classical languages at University of Houston (UH) $276,115 to study and fully publish for the first time a manuscript of the Homeric Iliad from the Middle Ages.

The grant is the largest award to a Texas-based scholar or institution in this funding cycle and comes with $150,000 in matching funds from Harvard University's Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C., raising the total value to $426,115.

Over the next three years, Due Hackney and her collaborator Mary Ebbott, an associate professor and chair of Holy Cross' department of the classics, will use the NEH funds to prepare an online publication of a scholarly edition of a 10th-century manuscript of Homer's Iliad, which is the oldest complete text of the Iliad known to be in existence. Both professors earned their doctorates at Harvard University and are co-editors of the Homer Multitext Project.

"Dr. Due Hackney is to be commended for these impressive awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Harvard University's Center for Hellenic Studies," said John W. Roberts, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at UH. "As her second award from NEH this year, she has demonstrated that the trajectory of her research is very much in the vanguard of current knowledge production in the humanities. We applaud her success as an example of Tier One excellence."

The NEH recently announced $39 million in grants for 244 humanities projects, including four projects in Texas. UH had the most money awarded among the Texas recipients, followed by the University of Texas at Austin with a $235,000 grant. The city of Austin and the Museum of the Gulf Coast in Port Arthur were each granted $2,500 to participate in a national film history project.

This is the second NEG grant awarded to Due Hackney in 2012. In March, she was awarded an Enduring Questions: Pilot Course grant of $20,881 to develop and undergraduate course on the question, "Who owns the past?" In that round of funding, the NEH awarded $17 million to 208 humanities projects.

About the National Endowment for the Humanities
Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant program is available at: http://www.neh.gov

About the University of Houston
The University of Houston is a Carnegie-designated Tier One public research university recognized by The Princeton Review as one of the nation's best colleges for undergraduate education. UH serves the globally competitive Houston and Gulf Coast Region by providing world-class faculty, experiential learning and strategic industry partnerships. Located in the nation's fourth-largest city, UH serves more than 39,500 students in the most ethnically and culturally diverse region in the country.