Ole Miss professor to conduct NEH Landmarks of American History and Culture workshop
OXFORD, Miss. - Dr. John Neff, associate professor of history at the University of Mississippi, prepares to relive the American Civil War as he conducts a 2007 summer workshop entitled ‘War, Death and Remembrance: The memory and commemoration of the American Civil War’.
According to Neff, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded him approximately $110,000 to conduct two week-long workshops - $55,000 per week. NEH is an independent grant-making agency of the federal government.
Each week during the workshops 25 selected community college faculties, from around the world, will come and join Neff in learning how to remember and commemorate the past – specifically the Civil War. The workshops, taking place on the Ole Miss campus, are tentatively scheduled for the first two weeks of June.
“We want to teach them new ways of thinking about the Civil War,” said Neff. “The memory methodology that we’re going to teach them is the ability to try and understand, not just the events themselves, but how people have lived with the events; thought about the events; and how the events have been important in their lives since.”
To do this, Neff will offer classes to introduce teachers to different ideas and theories along with workshops where teachers will conduct research on different topics. He invited two experts on monuments and commemoration: Dr. Thomas Brown from the University of South Carolina and Dr. Kirk Savage from the University of Pittsburgh, and the two will discuss Civil War monuments and their meanings for various audiences in the United States. Neff also plans to take the teachers to Shiloh National Military Park in Shiloh, Tenn. and the Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center in Corinth, Miss; the newest Civil War sight established by the federal government. According to Neff, it is the only center of its kind in the country.
“We want to teach them to read their landscape - places like their local park system, cemetery or battlefield,” said Neff. “We want to teach them that these are textbooks, in a sense, that can be read for meaning - not only about the events, but about the people who have lived since and then tried to make sense out of this war through their actions.”
According to Neff, he learned of this opportunity through Leslie Urgo from the Department of Outreach and Continuing Education and JoAnn Edwards, a speech instructor at the university; who both helped write the grant.
“It is an honor to receive this grant, and it is because of Neff’s expertise that we were able to apply. He put together a fine program,” Edwards said. “This says a lot about the university’s credentials and Dr. Neff, specifically.”
This workshop is one of many Landmarks of American History and Culture workshops that the National Endowment for the Humanities offers as its ‘We the People’ initiative. It is geared towards community college faculty who teach introductory courses in American history, government, literature, art history, or other related subjects.
“I want teachers to be able to take back to their classrooms the idea that this set of events 140 years ago is still very much apart of our imagination as Americans,” said Neff. “And, until we can come to grips with that, it’s going to continue to be a very important part of that imagination.”