The National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington DC has announced the winners of its most recent cycle of grants, in which it awarded $39.3 million to 245 Humanities Projects nationwide. One of only three NEH grants awarded to projects in western Massachusetts—and one of the largest in the state—went to Skyler Arndt-Briggs and Barton Byg, of the DEFA Film Library, the German and Scandinavian Studies Program and the Interdepartmental Program in Film Studies at UMass Amherst.

NEH awarded $216,849 to support an interdisciplinary Summer Institute for College and University Teachers on the topic of Culture in the Cold War: East German Art, Music and Film, to take place from June 17 to July 14, 2018. Drawing on the latest research in art history, musicology, film studies, and German studies, the Institute seeks to further our understanding of the role of cultural policy and the individual in socialist modernity. This involves: re-evaluating debates about artistic freedom and censorship; considering relations between high and low (popular), as well as official and alternative arts cultures; and challenging conventional assumptions about the periodization of work on socialist ideology and cultural policies. Above all, the Institute will strive to establish the importance—and timeliness—of revisiting this period of recent history in today’s college classrooms.

Arndt-Briggs and Byg will be joined by guest faculty from prestigious international institutions, including: Seán Allan (University of St. Andrews, German and film studies), Joy Calico (Vanderbilt University, musicology), April Eisman (Iowa State University, art history), Elaine Kelly (University of Edinburgh, musicology), Hiltrud Schulz (DEFA Film Library, film curator) and Johanna Yunker (UMass Amherst, musicology). The Institute’s scholarly seminars and workshops will be accompanied by a four-week Film and Lecture Series, which will be open to the Five College community and the general public.