NEH honors two professors

Two professors earned recognition from the National Endowment for the Humanities this spring. Ellen Hoobler, assistant professor of art history at Cornell College, is co-director of a project that has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Start-Up grant, and Kirilka Stavreva, professor of English and creative writing, was selected as a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Scholar.

Hoobler’s project, “Dangerous Embodiments: Theories, Methods, and Best Practices for Historical Character Modeling in Humanities 3D Environments,” is a collaboration with faculty at the University of Arkansas, among other schools. The goal is to create a method to design and evaluate avatars—digital representations of a person—that are more inclusive and better reflect different and combined ethnic heritages. She plans to incorporate some of the virtual environments, along with the results of the project’s work, into her courses at Cornell.

Stavreva will participate in a seminar titled “Tudor Books and Readers: 1485-1603.” The five-week program will be held at the Plantin-Moretus Museum, in Antwerp, Belgium; at Senate House Library, University of London; and at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. The 16 teachers selected to participate in the program each receive a stipend of $3,900 to cover their travel, study, and living expenses.