A book from the NEH Summer Institute final exhibit.
Salt Lake
Community College rose to the top in a highly competitive grant application
process this year to host a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer
Institute. Each Institute is an opportunity to explore topics relevant to
undergraduate education in the humanities, and SLCC was one of only two
community colleges in the country this year to receive an NEH grant to host a
Summer Institute.
The SLCC-hosted
institute was led by faculty members Lisa Bickmore, Melissa Helquist and
Charlotte Howe. The three writing professors worked with SLCC Office of
Sponsored Projects director Nicole Omer to apply for the grant, and then they
designed the curriculum, planned the projects and secured visiting faculty.
“It was a big
project, and we’re really proud of the work we did,” Bickmore said. “This is
the first time SLCC hosted such an institute, and community colleges are not
often awarded these grants.”
Melissa Helquist (l-r), Lisa Bickmore and Charlotte Howe.
The Institute at
SLCC began by asking several questions including: What is a book? Where do
people find books? What is the history of human interaction with books and what
can history teach us about emerging modes of the book? Who is invited to read?
Who is inhibited, or even prohibited, from reading books in their various
forms?
Each scholar at
the Institute, considering those questions, then designed, prototyped and
produced “experimental” books for an exhibit that was displayed at the Salt
Lake City Library.
Participants in the Summer Institute.
