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Professor Lisa Heuvel is part of a team of educators awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant for a teacher institute focused on the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower’s arrival and the complex legacy of the Plymouth Colony: Beyond the Mayflower: New Voices from Colonial America.
Heuvel and colleagues from the Plimoth Plantation living history museum in Massachusetts submitted a proposal for the project to the NEH’s Summer Seminars and Institutes grant competition. Their proposal was one of 215 to receive awards totaling $28 million.
Heuvel will co-direct an institute at Plimoth Plantation for elementary, middle school and high school teachers to be held in the summer of 2020. A diverse faculty and guest speakers, including representatives from the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe will guide the teachers to an understanding of the cultures in place before and after the Mayflower’s arrival.
“My colleagues and I will bring new findings in archaeology, historical scholarship and leadership studies to a unique case-study: how the indigenous and colonial communities functioned as living systems in a changing geopolitical landscape.” Heuvel said. “Our participants will have a multisensory, interdisciplinary and cross-cultural environment in which to re-discover Plymouth Colony and explore its significance in the 21st-century world.”
In addition to leading classes in leadership and American studies at Christopher Newport, Heuvel is the former director of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s Teacher Institute. In addition to authoring numerous articles on colonial history, she co-authored a book on the Civil War. Currently, Heuvel is editing a teachers’ guide to historical interpretation and storytelling in the classroom.
The NEH grants support vital research, education, preservation and public programs in the humanities.