NEH Summer Seminar for College Teachers

Director: Stephen C. Behrendt, George Holmes Distinguished University Professor of English, University of Nebraska

Stipends for Seminar Participants: $3700

Overview

I hope that you will find the seminar project described here to be as exciting for your scholarship and teaching as I do for mine. The seminar in which we will be partners and colleagues offers us the opportunity to contribute in an unusually meaningful way to the ongoing literary and cultural reassessment that is quite literally remapping the Romantic literary landscape.

We will spend six weeks in a collegial environment talking and writing about a core collection of recently recovered British literary texts from the Romantic period (c. 1775-1840) known as the "Corvey Collection." We will conduct individual scholarly and/or pedagogical projects focusing especially on the most prolific novelists represented in this collection. Their lives and works have historically gone largely (if not entirely) unexamined, but they provide valuable cultural indicators of the literary tastes of an emerging mass readership as well as a documentary record of a definable intertextual literary "conversation" carried on in print among these now little-known writers and those of their contemporaries who achieved canonical status over the following two centuries. Working individually and in concert, we will consider the consequences for our research and for our teaching of the recovery and reassessment of this remarkable body of material.

Contents of this Description:   Click to go to a section, use "back" to return

Historical, Critical, and Cultural Contexts of the Seminar
Why This Particular Seminar?
The Resources at Nebraska
Library Resources
The Department of English
Housing Arrangements
Lincoln and the Community
Seminar Outcomes
Procedures and Expectations
Schedule of Seminar Activities
About the Director
Application and Selection Process

The Historical, Critical, and Cultural Contexts of the Seminar

Recent efforts to recover literary works written by British women during the period of 1775 have stimulated a dramatic reassessment both of the nature of "Romanticism" as an intellectual and cultural phenomenon and of the criteria that scholars use to discuss content and value in literary works of the period. Adding Helen Maria Williams, Mary Robinson, and Charlotte Smith to the "early Romantic poets" (formerly defined in terms of the canonical male figures of William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge), and then adding Mary Tighe, Felicia Hemans, and Letitia Elizabeth Landon to the "later Romantics" (who used to be simply Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats) produces a literary scene whose nature and emphases differ dramatically from the familiar paradigm of "Romanticism" derived from exclusive consideration of the male poets. That paradigm stressed concepts of sublimity, elevated rhetoric, intellectual rigor, and prophetic utterance historically associated with male gender models. It excluded what scholars like Anne Mellor, Stuart Curran, Paula Feldman, and Marlon Ross have variously labeled a "feminine Romanticism" that stressed compassion, nurturance, community, and inclusiveness. Moreover, it largely excluded other alternative "mappings" of Romanticism and its writing community that emphasized matters of gender, class, economics, sociopolitics, or aesthetics.

The situation is comparable in Romantic prose fiction, where adding writers like Barbara Hofland, Elizabeth Gunning, Mary Meeke, and Jane West to the company of historically canonized names like Jane Austen, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, and Walter Scott likewise requires that we reassess our notions about the nature of Romantic prose fiction. As with Romantic poetry, closer examination of the full range of Romantic prose fiction reveals that many of the authors were familiar with one another's productions, and that many of their works in fact respond both implicitly and explicitly to those other publications in terms of both subject matter and ideology. In other words, the British Romantic literary scene was in reality characterized by (1) a community of writers whose works – like the authors themselves – may be perceived from their extensive intertextuality to be in conversation with one another, and also by (2) a general resistance to easy categorizing along lines of gender, class, and intellectual, sociopolitical, or aesthetic orientation.

Jürgen Habermas attributed what he called the "structural transformation of the public sphere" in later eighteenth century Europe to the rise of an increasingly literate public whose ideas and tastes were at once shaped and reinforced by the burgeoning print culture. According to Habermas, this transformation was strongly affected by various print and pseudo-print organs which he collectively called "journals," and which gave private individuals opportunities to lend added authority to their opinions by virtue of their articulation – their "public-ation" – in the more permanent and widely circulating vehicle of print. Unlike the strictly civic political body, the discursive body represented in Habermas's paradigm is largely separate from the state, but it still bears considerable "political" weight in the diverse social, economic, ideological, and intellectual aspects of its content. Anne Mellor has recently argued (2000), however, that in applying his formulation primarily (perhaps even solely) to men – and to men of property at that – Habermas has elided the historical fact of women's considerable presence among both the consumers and the producers of public documents and public culture, including literature. Mellor argues that women – and their literary (and other cultural) production – belong most properly not to a "counter-culture" based on the paradigm of "separate spheres" of activity, but rather to an expanded joint culture in which historically familiar features of difference (or "separateness") are reduced, rather than intensified, by the public discursive field which is itself shared by – rather than divided between – women and men. This is why Romantic literature is best understood as a public "conversation" among authors, their texts, and their readerships than as an array of often apparently autonomous "utterances."

The "separate-spheres" fallacy has had important consequences for the study of the novel during the "long" Romantic period, especially in England. Traditional discussions of Romantic literary production have too often been constrained by insufficiently wide and generous assessments of the nature of the field. It is a commonplace in critical histories of the novel, for instance, to identify primary "threads" or sub-genres like the sentimental (Mackenzie, Robinson, Opie) the Jacobin (Wollstonecraft, Godwin, Holcroft), the anti-Jacobin (Hamilton, West) and the Gothic novel (Reeve, Radcliffe, Lewis). In these (and other) cases, the categories tend to be heavily coded with a priori assumptions that are brought to the works and applied like measuring rods: novels "fit" or do not "fit" – and therefore "succeed" or do not "succeed" – to they extent that they do or do not conform to and fulfill the expectations and paradigms associated with those predefined categories. Moreover, with the notable exceptions of Radcliffe and Austen, the Romantic-era novel – especially as it is deemed a subject for "study" or for "teaching" – has often been associated especially with the work of men (Godwin, Lewis, Galt, and of course Scott). And yet Ann H. Jones demonstrated (1986) that for almost the entire "Romantic period" in England the most popular novelists were women. Recent revisionist scholarship (especially, but not exclusively, feminist inquiry) has paid particular attention to the political and/or ideological aspects of Romantic fiction, partly in order to document the presence of women within the public discourse (as indicated above). But while this scholarship has contributed importantly to current efforts to remap the Romantic literary landscape generally, its particular ideological emphasis has, paradoxically, served in many cases to further reinforce the categories – of fiction and of the critical criteria for judging it – without sufficiently expanding the field of primary material under consideration.

Why This Particular Seminar?

Mellor wrote in 2000 that the long-accepted paradigm of "separate spheres" is giving way to a paradigm based on shared, rather than divided, intellectual, cultural, and discursive space. But the field of Romantic fiction – for both research scholars and classroom teachers (in many cases, of course, they are the same) – is still subject to misinterpretation for two principal reasons: (1) critical assumptions about the authors and their audiences have gone unquestioned for far too long, and (2) the primary texts required for the overdue reassessment are scarce or inaccessible, as is solid demographic information about Romantic-era readerships. Recovering these materials is vital also for pedagogical reasons if we as teachers are to develop and incorporate into our professional work curricular materials and perspectives that more fully and more accurately reflect the historical and cultural realities of the Romantic era in England.

What, then, is the impact for scholars and teachers (like ourselves) of the ongoing recovery of the extensive primary materials that trace this highly intertextual literary conversation, this dialogue in print? This question lies at the center of the proposed seminar, as does the parallel question: how can we best use these discoveries to develop greater critical sophistication and cultural sensitivity in the way we represent British Romantic writing in our scholarship and in our classrooms, where we are engaged in shaping the scholars and teachers who will follow us and who will derive from the rapidly expanding body of Romantic literary texts new and presumably even more expansive questions?

The Resources at Nebraska

The University of Nebraska is uniquely poised to facilitate projects of recovery and reassessment in British Romantic fiction. The cornerstone resource is the spectacular microfiche archive of English, French, and German Belles Lettres texts that make up the "Corvey Collection," an archive recently acquired by the University Libraries.

One of the most important literary discoveries of the second half of the twentieth century was the recovery of the dazzling library of more than 72,000 volumes collected in the first half of the nineteenth century by Victor Amadeus, the Landgrave of Hess-Rotenberg (1779-1834) at his castle (Castle Corvey) near Paderborn, Germany. This remarkable library remained unknown to scholars until late in the 1970s, when the University of Paderborn began cataloguing and copying to microfiche some of the collection. This collection, which is especially rich in fiction, constitutes one of the most important archives of British and Continental Romantic writing in existence anywhere; it includes some 3300 titles in English, 3200 in French, and 2700 in German, many of them exceedingly rare. The University of Nebraska is the first American institution to acquire all these materials and make them readily available for research and scholarly inquiry. Supplementing this cache of primary materials is the University Libraries' excellent microform collection of 18th- and 19th-century British periodicals, which collection contains virtually full runs of more than 75% of British literary periodicals active during the Romantic period. These secondary materials make possible a systematic and contextually significant documentary study of the contemporary reception and reputation of the individual authors and works represented in the Corvey collection and of the broader literary scene generally. Indeed, the distinguishing mark of this seminar is the direct access it will provide to materials virtually unavailable elsewhere in the United States in a single collection or research site.

Library Resources

I have arranged for all of you to have full library privileges, including "faculty status" for use of library facilities and resources. The University Libraries offer excellent study and technological facilities generally, including efficient interlibrary loan service and good electronic access to other libraries and to relevant data and document collections away from Lincoln. The microforms staff are able quickly and economically to duplicate microfiche for your individual use. They also have available for you to borrow a dozen portable microfiche readers, so that you can study microform materials outside the library. Each of you will also have – in addition to your stipend – a sum of $100 per participant specifically for copying, since many of you may want to use the libraries' excellent facilities for converting microform materials into laser-printed hard copy. You will be happy to know that Love Memorial Library is immediately adjacent to Andrews Hall, home of the Department of English.

The Department of English

The Department of English will provide comfortable, air-conditioned office space for each of you, and probably some limited staff support. Two advanced doctoral students in Romantics studies (Dawn Vernooy Epp and Joy Currie) will assist me (and you) with our day-to-day operation. Because the Department of English operates summer classes, there will be opportunities for you to interact with other faculty if you wish. We will, naturally, have a number of opportunities for socializing, both among ourselves and with other colleagues from the university community.

Housing Arrangements

I am arranging for on-campus housing in Neihardt Hall, in part so that we can maintain a sense of community and proximity to one another. Neihardt is an older, centrally located, hotel-style dormitory that houses the University Honors Program during the regular academic year. It is specifically designated as "adults only" during the summer, which means that you will not be sharing space with cheerleaders, percussionists, or high-school mini-campers. It is a comfortable, managed facility with nice rooms, a very good (and diversified) food service, and a hospitable staff familiar with the needs of short-term faculty/academic summer visitors. It is also conveniently located about a two minute walk from our seminar facilities. Because budgets for Summer 2003 are still unsettled, I have no definitive dollar number for accommodations in Neihardt Hall. However, on the basis of past years and projected budget increases, it appears that a six-week stay, including "full" linen service (including daily towel exchange) and three meals a day (7 days a week) will run in the neighborhood of $2400 – a good bargain. Should you require alternative accommodations, we will do our best to help you explore the options, including the best possibilities for off-campus housing.

Lincoln and the Community

Lincoln is a pleasant community of some 230,000 with varied cultural attractions: good museums (including the Sheldon Gallery, a leading museum of modern art), a summer repertory theatre and other summer theatre and music events, a good – if modest – zoo, a Northern League minor-league baseball team, excellent parks and trails for walking and biking, and a variety of area lakes for recreational use, as well as several dozen movie screens and a wide range of good restaurants. Lincoln is within an hour's drive of Omaha and its Joslyn Museum of Art, its world-class zoo, its AAA minor-league professional baseball team, and all the other amenities of a larger metropolis. Lincoln is also within easy driving distance (c. 120 miles) of Kansas City, which offers still other cultural and recreational opportunities to those who wish to venture further afield. Finally, eastern Nebraska provides a surprising number of good state and regional parks for a wide variety of outdoor activities. All these are moderately priced, even by regional standards.

Seminar Outcomes

One logical outcome of each participant's project is publication as an article, scholarly essay, or part of a larger project like a book. I see my role partly as that of facilitator, helping each of you to shape your project and take the fullest advantage of available materials and resources. At the same time, I appreciate that, given the diversity of individuals, institutions, and teaching situations that will be represented in our seminar, not every one of you will in fact be aiming at "publication" of your results in the conventional sense. What one does in rethinking one's classroom and classroom procedures (including both readings and actual session activities) seems to me to have no less an impact on the profession than more traditional print-media (or electronic) "publication" of one's work. Therefore I will gladly also assist those of you whose objectives are more immediately focused on the classroom and who may choose to concentrate on rethinking matters of canon and representation or on formulating new teaching materials and strategies. In other words, I intend our seminar to accommodate as nearly as possible the twin realities – and the twin imperatives – of a profession in which publication of research is widely rewarded while classroom teaching generally occupies the bulk of our time. With your help, we can do it.


Procedures and Expectations

If you are interested in the opportunities this seminar might provide for new directions in your work, you can consult the on-line short-title catalogue of the Corvey belles lettres collection that has been prepared at Sheffield Hallam University to assess the range of available primary texts and begin to formulate an appropriate research or pedagogical project. This short-title catalogue, and the additional information provided through this link, will help you assess the resources available at the University of Nebraska. I will be happy to respond to specific queries about the collection and other available resources (including the University Libraries' substantial collection of Romantic literary texts in conventional print media) in order to help you formulate the fullest and most effective proposal.

As indicated above, our common seminar subject will be a collective reassessment of the nature and substance of Romantic fiction, both as we know it from our scholarly research and from our classroom teaching, together with an examination of how – and why – including relatively unfamiliar but once popular and influential works impacts both that scholarship and that teaching. In order to make this very large task reasonably manageable under our time constraints, I will ask all seminar participants to seriously consider focusing their intended projects especially on one of the following female novelists who are particularly well represented in the Corvey Collection: Selina Davenport (11 titles), Catherine Gore (16), Sarah Green (10), Elizabeth Gunning (9), Jane Harvey (11), Anne Hatton (13), Barbara Hofland (20), Mary Meeke (26), Eliza Parsons (11), Anna Maria Porter (13), Regina Marie Roche (15), "Rosalia St. Clair" (12), Louise Sidney Stanhope (15), and Jane West (11). You will find a list of specific titles for these authors and novels at this link. I will, however, be happy to work with any of you who may already have projects in mind that involve other authors who are well represented in the Corvey Collection, including prolific male authors like Anthony F. Holstein (12 titles), Thomas E. Hook (8), Francis Lathom (22), and William P. Scargill (10). A seminar in fiction during a limited six-week period runs some risk of overly ambitious goals, of course, especially when the primary texts are largely unfamiliar. By asking each of you to be primarily responsible for one author (although individual authors may be selected by more than one participant), I hope to reduce the overall reading load and still facilitate both a depth and breadth of focus that will make comparative discussion at our group meetings more productive for all, especially since we will be working also with some primary and secondary critical and pedagogical works that everyone will have read in advance.

I will ask each invited participant to prepare in advance, from materials I will supply, a preliminary reading list emphasizing the Corvey and periodical collections and outlining a proposed research or pedagogical project. (This material will evolve naturally from your successful application essay.) I will be happy to work with you in shaping and refining these lists, which you will share with one another no later than the first group session so each of you can identify colleagues with related projects and interests and can begin the collaboration that will enable us jointly to "map" our activities.

I will also ask that each of you read in advance all or parts of several secondary texts to form a basis for initial discussion of the issues involved in the seminar: Gary Kelly's English Fiction of the Romantic Period, 1789-1830 (1989), Thomas McCarthy's Relationships of Sympathy: The Writer and Reader in British Romanticism (1997), Anne Mellor's Mothers of the Nation (2000), and two essays: Peter Garside's "Collections of English Fiction in the Romantic Period" (1998) and my own "Questioning the Romantic Novel" (1994). I will also supply copies of both the texts and selected contemporary reviews of several novels – I am tentatively thinking of Anna Maria Porter's Octavia (1798), Jane West's The Infidel Father (1802), and Mary Meeke's anonymous Something Odd (1804) – so that we will also have a limited group of common primary readings to discuss.

Rethinking the Romantic literary scene requires not only searching discussion of the primary works (and the secondary historical, intellectual, and cultural works which they both reflect and inform), but also dialogue about strategies for developing coherent, manageable curricular and pedagogical models from this daunting wealth of materials. Another distinguishing feature of our seminar will be our shared focus on the evolving relationship between your own individual research projects and your day-to-day engagement with that material in the changing environment of the Romantic-period classroom. I have arranged for us to have a dedicated meeting room well equipped with electronic and other equipment and resources, so that we will have opportunities to discuss, and to experiment with, some of the new technology (like CD-ROM technology, interactive video, the Internet and world wide web resources, etc.) that is becoming available for classroom use in our institutions. The University of Nebraska has an excellent New Media Center in which interested seminar participants will be able to do additional work in a hands-on environment with this new technology and then test materials they develop in our own fully interactive classroom.

Schedule of Seminar Activities

A detailed explanation of the proposed schedule follows. Note that the seminar includes several related activities geared toward generating collegial dialogue. I will ask each of you to share your individual research and/or pedagogical projects as they evolve. Regardless your own major emphases and objectives in the seminar, I will also ask each of you to develop for at least informal discussion some models for course materials and teaching strategies.

Overview: Our seminar will run for six weeks. You will spend most of your time on your individual research or pedagogical project, and I and my assistants will be readily available to provide assistance and advice. Each week we will convene two formal sessions (c. 3 hours each; with probably three sessions in Week 1): at one, our discussion will focus upon aspects of the seminar activities relevant to everyone's project, while at the other the discussion will range over individual participants' research with the objective of generating common ground from these separate activities. I want to stress that our schedule will be eminently flexible, and that it is a priority with me to reserve plenty of time (and space) for non-required informal meetings among sub-groups of participants (with or without the director) whose projects share significant elements; much of this collegial exchange will naturally be ad hoc and unscripted. I will be available on a full-time basis for whatever advice, consultation, or direction any of you may desire, and I will also function as "leader" for group sessions as needed.

General topics for investigation, by weeks:

WEEK 1: Overview of seminar issues and problems. What do we typically include in our definitions of English "Romanticism" and why? What problems – and opportunities – arise when we add to the familiar canonical authors and works the many others that have historically been neglected and marginalized? How can this seminar, and the unique materials available to participants, begin to redress traditional conceptions of Romantic writing whose inaccuracy is a function of the inadequacy of their "range of inclusion"?
Consideration and initial roundtable discussion of individual participants' research projects. Preliminary consideration of traditional and alternative syllabi and teaching models for courses in Romanticism.
Introduction to the Corvey Collection, the archive of 18th- and 19th- century British periodicals, and other University of Nebraska materials and resources.

WEEK 2: Participants begin reporting on their initial survey of materials and their in-depth reading of selected texts. In the first weeks, when you will be occupied mostly with reading activities, we will use full-group and small-group meetings to share the results of our work, to begin establishing intertextual thematic or topical connections among the readings (and the associated projects) and the familiar canon. In this process, we will also begin thinking about syllabi and teaching models to accommodate these new materials and facilitate new and different ways – including technological ways – of studying and teaching them.

WEEK 3: We will dig deeper into the primary readings and into the applications of modern literary and cultural theory to them, inquiring into such matters as gender and gender expectation in subject matter, intended and actual readerships, critical reception, the "politics" and economics of authorship, and demonstrable interaction with contemporaries in the Romantic writing community. What avenues were open – and closed – to these writers and how did they deal with these opportunities and limitations? What subjects were particularly "suited" – or "closed" – to one type of author or another? Under what circumstances and by what standards were the authors evaluated in their times (see especially the archive of periodical literature).

WEEK 4: This is "technology week," for interested parties. We will have full-group demonstrations and tutorials in our two main sessions, as well as small-group work and individual consultation, both in our electronic classroom in the Department of English and, as desired, in the university's New Media Center. You will be able to sample hardware, software, and computer-based technology for teaching and research in Romantic writing, get advice, share your own technology-based projects with one another, and fine-tune (or simply begin) projects that employ technology for teaching and research activities.

WEEK 5: Moving toward closure, we will begin to report back on our individual projects, at the same time considering the historical and cultural evolution of the Romantic period from its beginnings in the volatile climate that preceded and surrounded the French Revolution to the increasing "domesticity" that characterizes the post-Regency period and the rise of Victorian culture. What intellectual and cultural changes are traceable in the literature? More important, how do the reading programs of the individual participants contribute to all participants' better and broader understanding of the full range of Romantic writing throughout the period? Our collaborative work – and our sharing of our projects – now functions to inform everyone about aspects of the seminar that not everyone has had time to investigate in detail. During this week we will also revisit the implications of our work for our teaching, working in roundtable fashion to develop new and/or alternative pedagogical and curricular models from Romantic studies.

WEEK 6: In this final week we assess our work by concluding our reports on individual projects and by projecting new horizons for research and for teaching. What unanswered questions have we exposed in the seminar? Where should scholarly research go next in remapping the Romantic literary landscape? What sort of materials do archives like the Corvey suggest that we still need? What sort of textual, critical, historical, intellectual, aesthetic, methodological, theoretical, and pedagogical assumptions must be challenged, interrogated, revised, and perhaps even abandoned as a consequence of what we have come to know about the British Romantic writing community? Finally, how can we best incorporate into our daily teaching and research activities both the particular discoveries we have made and – perhaps more important – their implications for the ways in which we think about the texts we teach, the contexts in which we teach them, and the students whom we attempt to engage in the joint project of discovery?

Group discussion topics.

WEEK 1: (Session 1): Introduction; getting acquainted; "comparing notes" about Romanticism, its culture, its figures, and its characteristics. Introduction to the Corvey Collection. Introduction to the UNL microforms collection (including 18th- and 19th- century periodicals)
(Session 2): Initial observations about the Corvey Collection and the periodical collection and their applicability to individual projects.

WEEK 2: (Session 1): Identifying our projects, their parameters, and their problems; biographical, bibliographical, historical and technological resources.
(Session 2): Preliminary research findings; interim reports on projects.

WEEK 3: (Session 1): Matters of theory: How does modern critical and cultural theory help us to interpret and evaluate the materials we are recovering and studying?
(Session 2): Theory II: Specific applications of theory to and from individual participants' projects.

WEEK 4: (Session 1): What is the role of technology in research and teaching in these materials? Demonstrations of technology, including studying the construction and function of the Sheffield Hallam Corvey website. Visit to New Media Center to survey and sample technological aids.
(Session 2): Hands-on work by participants (as desired) with evolving technology-based projects and applications.

WEEK 5: (Session 1): Interim focused reports on progress of projects.
(Session 2): Pedagogical models and strategies implementing the seminar materials.

WEEK 6: (Session 1): Assessment issues: individual projects and the broader vistas of Romantics studies. Brief individual presentations I.
(Session 2): Brief individual presentations II; concluding matters.

About the Director

My professional work reflects my involvement with both traditional and electronically-oriented projects in scholarship and teaching. My work, which I would characterize as strongly interdisciplinary in nature and methodology, extends to both canonical and non-canonical authors and subjects. Most recently, I have focused my energies on projects involving the recovery and reassessment of historically neglected or marginalized writings, especially by women. I have begun working with my students to explore and employ the emerging electronic resources for scholarship and teaching, including helping them create and mount (on a local website I maintain) electronic texts and other materials relating to the Corvey materials and other resources in Romantics studies. As Visiting Professor in the Institute of Cultural Studies at Sheffield Hallam University (1998-2001), I participated in that university's "Corvey Project," studying their electronic apparatus to the Corvey holdings, a growing cache of supplementary materials like synopses, biographical and bibliographical materials, and summaries of contemporary reviews that is being mounted on an evolving website at Sheffield Hallam. I also serve on the Advisory Board for the Women Romantic Poets project at the University of California, Davis, and on the Editorial Board for scholarly electronic publications on the Sheffield Hallam and Cardiff Corvey websites. Seminar participants will have access to the resources of these (and other) electronic text repositories, as well as to substantial personal archives of primary and secondary materials I have collected over the past decade.

A final observation. I am excited about the work we will do together. The dynamics of the seminar environment offer us the opportunity to get together in one place, work together, draw energy from one another, and accomplish far more collectively as a study group than we could hope to achieve individually in the relative isolation of our respective institutions, where teaching loads are often high, research funding low, and colleagues with similar interests often altogether nonexistent.

Application and Selection Process

NEH provides detailed information concerning both the conditions of eligibility for Summer Seminars generally and the process of applying for membership in this seminar. For your convenience, I have placed this information on this website; you may access it by clicking here. I have also put on this site the cover sheet that MUST accompany your application, should you choose to apply to participate in the seminar; you can access this form by clicking here.

If you prefer to have this information in your hands in conventional paper form, or if you are unable to access and download it through this website, please contact me by mail or by email, and I will send you the necessary copies. My addresses (including an active email link) appear below, at the end of this document.

Please note with particular care NEH's very specific requirements about the arrangement and length of the application cover sheet, as well as the equally detailed information that NEH also provides about the nature and scope of the essay that you must furnish as part of your application.

In keeping with NEH policy, all applications will be reviewed, evaluated, and ranked by me and two senior faculty members from the Department of English. The principal criteria for selection will include the following:

• quality of research/pedagogical proposal and appropriateness to the available resources;
• potential value to Romantics studies of your proposed project;
• likelihood that your stated goals can be achieved through participation in the seminar and within a reasonable period during and after the seminar's conduct;
• broadly inclusive distribution of participants relative to geographical distribution, types of home institution, length of time in the profession, and gender.

Perhaps the most important part of your application is the essay you must submit as part of your complete application. This essay should include any personal and academic information that is relevant; reasons for applying for this particular seminar; your own interest – both personal and academic – in the topic; your qualifications to do the work of the seminar and make a contribution to it; what you hope to accomplish by participation, including any individual research and writing projects; and the relation of the seminar to your teaching.

For application forms and other information about the seminar, please follow the links above, or contact me directly:

Stephen C. Behrendt
Department of English
University of Nebraska
Lincoln, NE 68588-0333

Phone: (402) 472-1806
FAX :  (402) 472-9771
email:   SBEHRENDT1@UNL.EDU

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