National Endowment for the Humanities Grant to MCC Will Help Improve Equity and Reduce Education Costs

MANCHESTER, Conn. (February 7, 2022) – As the recipient of a more than $145,000 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant, Manchester Community College will spearhead a project that will create a digital reader of art history essays authored largely by scholars who identify as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color). The essays will feature global historical perspectives, as well as the art and histories of traditionally marginalized communities. This project will be released as an open educational resource (OER) and will be published on the Smarthistory website (www.smarthistory.org).

OERs are teaching, learning and research source materials made available under open licenses that allow users to access them at no cost. Textbook prices, which often are out-of-pocket expenses even for students with financial aid, can be in the hundreds of dollars.

The NEH announced the grant award earlier this month. MCC Associate Professor Olivia Chiang will serve as the project director and publication editor of this digital reader for courses in art history and related humanities fields.

Scholars who have to date committed to the project include Dr. Cécile Fromont of Yale University, writing on the circulation of African culture in the context of the slave trade; Dr. Arathi Menon of Hamilton College writing on global trade and exchange in ancient and medieval South Asia; and Dr. Tiya Miles of Harvard University writing with Ms. L’Merchie Frazier on Black and Indigenous weavers on Nantucket Island.

“The essays will provide the means for students not only to see how analytical art history papers are constructed and presented, but also will allow for classroom debate, discussion and dissection,” according to Chiang.

“The reader will be available fully online and free of charge, eliminating any financial barriers to access that traditional textbooks pose to community college students nationwide,” she said.

It will support and align with the newly redesigned curricula for Art History I and Art History II that have already been implemented at MCC. The course redesigns were spearheaded by Chiang, and purposefully reflect the belief held by many faculty within the Connecticut community college system that traditional introductory art history curricula neglect or devalue communities of color in the perspectives, artists and artworks that they feature. The project has the support of faculty at institutions across the state of Connecticut.