Deepthi Murali and Jason Heppler Receive NEH Funding for Connecting Threads Project
Deepthi Murali and Jason Heppler of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM) has received a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Digital Humanities Advancement Grant (Level II) of $138, 256 in support of the ongoing global textile history project Connecting Threads: Digitally Connecting Collections, Expanding Public Engagement.
Connecting Threads is a collaborative digital history project dedicated to amplifying the contributions of Indian weavers and Afro-Caribbean consumers to global histories of dress. Drawing on the work of an interdisciplinary team of researchers, the project in its first phase examined the history of the Madras handkerchief, an internationally popular dress accessory made of brightly coloured checked cotton.
The project explores the influence of Madras handkerchiefs on 18th and 19th century dress, tracing it from its origins in South India to the fashion capitals of the Greater Caribbean through to the industrial manufacturing centers of Europe. This digital project includes archival and material sources from over 12 archives and museum collections creating a network of institutional data and scholarship on these textiles.
Connecting Threads is a collaborative project led by George Mason University in the U.S. and University of Edinburgh in the UK. Our official institutional partners include Victoria & Albert Museum in London, University of Glasgow Archives in Scotland, The Bristol Museum and Archives in Bristol, The Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum in New York, and Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans. The DHAG grant will allow the project team to complete building the digital infrastructure and processing of collected data, setting up the project for Phase 2 development. In the next phase, Connecting Threads will further expand our research into the history of production of these textiles in southern India as well as begin research on the use of Indian cotton checked textiles in Southeast Asia. You can learn more about this project at www.connectingthreads.co.uk.
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 programs is available at: https://www.neh.gov/.
The Digital Humanities Advancement Grants program (DHAG) supports innovative, experimental, and/or computationally challenging digital projects, leading to work that can scale to enhance scholarly research, teaching, and public programming in the humanities.