Johannes Haubold, a professor of classics, Leigh Anne Lieberman, digital project specialist in the Department of Art and Archaeology, and Princeton University’s Papers of Thomas Jefferson have received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), announced on Aug. 1.

“The National Endowment for the Humanities is proud to support research, exhibitions, teacher training and preservation projects that examine and illuminate our history, literature and culture,” said NEH Acting Chairman Michael McDonald in the announcement.

Johannes Haubold

Johannes Haubold

Photo by Luke Soucy

Haubold received $300,000 for the project “Library of Babylonian Literature,” which will enable the preparation of six volumes of 10 texts to be published by Bloomsbury in London. These texts date from roughly 2000 B.C.E. to 500 B.C.E., and offer an expansive view into Babylonia, an ancient world culture centered in what is now Iraq.

Haubold said these editions are designed for a new audience of contemporary readers.

“Babylonian literature asks questions that can feel surprisingly relevant to us today, such as what it means to be human, and how we can make sense of our shared experience of suffering and loss,” he said. “To me, seeing that people from very different historical and cultural backgrounds end up asking such similar questions is among the most satisfying aspects of doing this work, and one of the main reasons why I am grateful to the NEH for supporting it.”

Each volume will include the original text in Babylonian with a facing translation, as well as interpretive essays. Haubold is collaborating with Sophus Helle, a former Princeton postdoc now at the Carlsberg Foundation in Copenhagen, Enrique Jiménez at LMU Munich and Selena Wisnom at the University of Leicester in the U.K.

Leigh Anne Lieberman

Leigh Anne Lieberman

Photo by John Blazejewski

Lieberman received $209,645 for the project “Teaching Ancient in a Digital Age: Emerging Methods and Literacies in the Ancient Mediterranean Classroom,” a series of virtual and in-person workshops on digital methods and resources available for the study and analysis of ancient texts and materials.

Lieberman, a 2018 Princeton graduate alumnus, supports data management strategies, digital scholarship, and computational methods for art history and archaeology research at the University.

She hopes the “Teaching Ancient in a Digital Age” training will equip higher education faculty and graduate students to devise lesson plans that incorporate new digital tools in the classroom.

“This training expands data and digital literacy among educators in the fields of ancient Mediterranean studies,” she said. “It will also encourage participants to reflect on the challenges and risks that using these tools may pose.” She noted that the training is designed to prepare participants to share these resources with the broader teaching community.

Christine Johnston, associate professor of ancient Mediterranean history at Western Washington University, is co-director of the project.

Papers of Thomas Jefferson

James McClure

Photo courtesy of James McClure

Princeton University’s Papers of Thomas Jefferson, a collaborative publishing hub for Jefferson source material in print and electronic format, was awarded $300,000 for the continued publication of the presidential papers of Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826). 

The project is preparing the definitive scholarly edition of Jefferson’s correspondence and papers. Since the publication of Volume 1 by Princeton University Press in 1950, the Papers of Thomas Jefferson has been publishing, in chronological sequence, not only the letters Jefferson wrote but also those he received.

“My colleagues and I are very grateful for the continuing support of the National Endowment for the Humanities as we continue to edit and publish Jefferson’s papers, with current focus on the second term of his presidency,” said James McClure, project director and general editor of the Papers of Thomas Jefferson and senior research historian. “The NEH funding enables us to move the edition forward on an expeditious schedule while maintaining the highest scholarly standards. We also appreciate the University’s steadfast and deep commitment to our mission as a premier American scholarly endeavor.”

The Jefferson Papers’ NEH grant, for a three-year period, is the project’s fourth grant from the Scholarly Editions and Translations program of the NEH since 2018. During this grant cycle, the editorial team will complete preparation of Volumes 51 through 53 for publication, which include documents from 1806 and 1807, and will perform principal editorial work on more than 1,500 documents for Volumes 56 through 58, which will contain documents from 1808. The project’s previous NEH grant, also for a three-year period, was awarded in 2022.