RRCHNM Receives NEH Grant in Collaboration with Seven Local Partners for Digitization of Civil War Graffiti
The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM), in collaboration with seven local partners—the Office of Historic Resources, (City of Fairfax, Virginia); the Brandy Station Foundation; the Office of Historic Preservation, (Prince William County); R.B. Toth Associates; the Manassas Museum System; NOVA Parks; and the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation—has been awarded a $350,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities Humanities Collections and Reference Resources program.
This grant will allow for the continuation of work started by RRCHNM, Historic Blenheim, the Brandy Station Foundation, and R.B. Toth Associates. This new round of funding will support the building and publishing of a digital archive focused on soldiers’ graffiti found in Civil War-era structures located in the greater Northern Virginia region operated by our six local project partners. The digital archive will provide scholars, students, and the public access to the graffiti and a reasonably large collection of ancillary archival material associated with the graffiti.
“As a research center at a public research university, we are proud to have been partnered with Historic Blenheim and the Brandy Station Foundation on this project since 2019.” Said project manager Mills Kelly, stressing the collaborative nature of the project. “Since our first round of funding in 2023, we have widened this collaboration to include all six members of the Northern Virginia Civil War Graffiti Trail. Thanks to the NEH, we can fully support all seven partners in their efforts to preserve and share this history with the public.”
Once the project is complete, we plan to open the database to participation by additional sites interested in depositing their digitized materials into the collection. We recognize that these sites may not have the expertise to digitize and mark up their graffiti or ancillary materials and so RRCHNM and our partners will create training materials (text, video) for other sites that may want to take part.
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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: www.neh.gov.
ABOUT THE ROY ROSENZWEIG CENTER FOR HISTORY AND NEW MEDIA (RRCHNM) Founded in 1994 by Roy Rosenzweig, RRCHNM was created as a part of George Mason University’s Department of History and Art History with the mission to democratize access to history. RRCHNM creates meaningful digital histories used by millions of people around the world. Learn more about RRCHNM’s current projects, graduate student education, podcasts, and K-12 educational resources here: https://rrchnm.org/