Adriana Brodsky, professor of history, was awarded a summer stipend of $6,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to complete the book-length monograph titled “Jewish Argentine Youth, 1940-1976.” As Jews were persecuted and murdered in Europe, Argentine Jews looked to the youth for salvation. This manuscript traces how Argentine Jewish youth responded to that and other calls to action as they lived through defining global and local moments. Through their responses, Argentine Jewish Youth played a central role in modernizing their community(ies) in Argentina, and in shaping ethnic identities both in Argentina and in Israel. Brodsky did research for the project in Israel on a Fulbright Senior Scholar award in 2018.
As the first director of the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory, King was charged with organizing and relocating archaeological collections from across the state to one central location. NEH grants helped preserve and electronically catalog records documenting more than 1-million objects from archaeological sites located throughout the Chesapeake Bay region, making them more broadly accessible to researchers. NEH funding also supported two comparative studies of English, Indigenous, and African culture in the Chesapeake. A consortium of researchers from around the region worked on these projects, contributing and digitizing their archaeological catalogs.
Through this work, archaeologists came to see nuances in interactions between Native Americans and English settlers, as evidenced through objects found in excavated sites. For instance, between 1660 and 1680, the colorful beads Native Americans traded changed from blue and white to black and red, indicating a growing antipathy for the settlers: among Native people, the color black was often closely associated with death. Beyond these insights, the funding resulted in two websites: ChesapeakeArchaeology.org and ColonialEncounters.org. These continue to be used by students and researchers as they explore the region’s history.