2012 Landmarks in American History and Culture Workshop
for Community College Faculty Members
 
 June 17-23, 2012 or June 24-30, 2012
 

Program Information

Program Information Index

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O'Keeffe Painting
Introduction
Why O'Keeffe
Why New Mexico
Workshop Structure
Workshop Schedule
Guest Scholars
Workshop Staff
Stipend, Tenure, and Conditions of Award
Lodging, Meals and Travel
Workshop Participant Eligibility
Application Checklist and Components
Selection Criteria
Submission of Applications and Notification Procedure
How to Submit Your Application
Contact Us

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Introduction

“When I think of death, I only regret that I will not be able to see this beautiful county anymore…unless the Indians are right and my spirit will walk here after I’m gone.”     Georgia O’Keeffe

Dear Colleague,

I am delighted to invite you to northern New Mexico to learn about this area’s rich Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo art, history, and culture and how Georgia O’Keeffe incorporates it and the glorious New Mexico landscape into her art. As an NEH Summer Scholar in the “Georgia O’Keeffe: Santa Fe, Abiquiú, and the New Mexico Landscape” workshop, you and twenty-four others will spend most of the week in Santa Fe, surrounded by the city’s many museums. We will also travel to equally historic Taos and Abiquiú to learn about the significance of these places to Georgia O’Keeffe’s art. This website, which will be updated as needed, explains the workshop.

Sponsored by the Community College Humanities Association (CCHA) and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the one-week “Georgia O’Keeffe: Santa Fe, Abiquiú, and the New Mexico Landscape” workshop provides you the opportunity to study Georgia O’Keeffe’s art in the land that informed it during the second half of her life. Daily seminars provided by guest scholars, as well as interaction with the scholars, with on-site specialists, and with community college faculty members from across the United States will enrich your development of a plan to incorporate your learning into your teaching and/or research. Two workshop dates are available to choose from: June 17-23 or June 24-30, 2012. There is no fee for this program, and you will receive a $1,200 to help defray expenses.

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Why O'Keeffe

Georgia O’Keeffe is one of America’s most renowned artists, the first American women artist to have a museum dedicated to her work, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. During her almost 99 years of life, O’Keeffe pioneered a fiercely individual art. Despite the strong pull of Europe and its influence on American artists during the early Modernist period, all of O’Keeffe’s training, at the Art Institute of Chicago and the New York Art Students League, and almost all of her subject matter is distinctly American. Critics have discussed how O’Keeffe’s work builds on modern European concepts of abstraction, but they also agree that her style is determinedly her own. Eleanor Munro, in Women’s Art Journal, calls O’Keeffe “an American original,” and Alfred Stieglitz called his 1923 exhibit of O’Keeffe’s work, “Georgia O’Keeffe, American.“ Mark Stevens, in his essay, “Introduction: Georgia O’Keeffe and the American Dream,” refers to the “air of quest or possibility” she brought to her life and work, especially as it characterizes 20th century women’s history.

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Why New Mexico

The workshop will be held in three sites significant to O’Keeffe: Santa Fe, the oldest capital city in America, the third oldest European settlement in America, and the first place O’Keeffe visited in New Mexico in 1917; Taos, a refuge for American artists since the 1800s, where O’Keeffe spent her first extended time in New Mexico in 1929; and Abiquiú, near which O’Keeffe began renting summer homes on Ghost Ranch in 1934. The ranch was owned by the wealthy writer and editor Arthur Pack, founder of Nature Magazine, and his wife Elizabeth “Brownie” Pack. When Pack remarried and built a home at Ghost Ranch for his new bride, O’Keeffe began renting his former home, Rancho de los Burros. In 1940 she purchased the home and several acres from Pack. Later, in 1945, she bought and began refurbishing an adobe compound in the village of Abiquiú, to which she moved in 1949 and where she spent the rest of her life, painting a landscape and absorbing a culture that captivated her.

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Workshop Structure

The CCHA/NEH Landmarks of American History and Culture workshop will involve a week of activities. Guest scholars in art history, American history, and American studies will lead daily seminars; you will participate in guided visits to artistic and historic sites in Santa Fe, Taos, and Abiquiú; you will be involved in stimulating interactions with colleagues from all over the country; and you will begin planning a teaching or research project. The unique holdings of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and Research Center, as well as the resources of other Santa Fe museums, such as the New Mexico Museum of Art, the Palace of the Governors, the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, and the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art, will be available to you to begin your teaching or research plan. You will be asked to report briefly at the end of the week on the plan inspired by the workshop that you intend to pursue when you return home.

You will also be able to share your project with other community college faculty members by posting it on the CCHA web site. In addition, five NEH Summer Scholars will be invited to present their teaching modules or research in one of the five CCHA regional conferences in October and November 2012.

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The Workshop Schedule (subject to change)

 “Georgia O’Keeffe: Santa Fe, Abiquiú, and the New Mexico Landscape”
June 17-23  or  June 24-30, 2012

Guest Scholars

The workshop has been designed as a dialogue among community college faculty members and guest scholars:

Barbara Buhler Lynes is Curator of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and Emily Fisher Landau Director of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center in Santa Fe. Dr. Lynes has published extensively about Georgia O’Keeffe. Her Georgia O’Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné, published in 1999, documents and authenticates O’Keeffe’s whole body of work, over 1000 paintings and more than 1000 watercolors and drawings. Dr. Lynes’ book, Georgia O’Keeffe and New Mexico: A Sense of Place, examines how O’Keeffe translates the New Mexico landscape in her paintings. Her most recent publication, “Georgia O’Keeffe and Photography: A Refined Regard,” appears in Shared Intelligence: American Painting and the Photograph, published in 2011 by the University of California Press.

Dr. Lynes will introduce the Summer Scholars to Georgia O’Keeffe by focusing on key elements of O’Keeffe’s growth as an artist, particularly before New Mexico, and on her position her in American art, particularly American Modernism. Dr. Lynes will also discuss O’Keeffe's many years spent living and painting in New Mexico and how the landscape and culture there influenced this second stage of her career. She will introduce workshops scholars to the Museum’s Georgia O’Keeffe Research Center, describe the holdings of the Center, and explain how participants might use the available material.

Virginia Scharff is Professor of History and Director, Center for the Southwest at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. The Center for the Southwest sponsors programs and events that bring the public together with scholars throughout the university and the region to promote understanding of Southwestern history, culture, landscape, and environment. Dr. Scharff also serves as Women of the West Chair at the Autry National Center of the American West in Los Angeles, California. She has published and spoken extensively about U.S. social history, women’s history in the West and Southwest, environmental history, and history in relation to the American landscape. Her most recent book is The Women Jefferson Loved, published by HarperCollins in 2010.

Dr. Scharff will discuss New Mexico’s early history and focus on the three main cultures which, from the beginning, have made New Mexico what it is today: the Native American, themselves descendents of prehistoric peoples; the Hispanic; and the Anglo. In her introduction to modern New Mexican history, Dr. Scharff will focus on the contributions of Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo women to the art and culture and their relationship to the land.

Joseph Traugott serves as Curator of Twentieth Century Art at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Many of Dr. Traugott’s publications and exhibitions have addressed the holistic tradition of Native American, Hispanic and European American art; the aesthetic fusions that have occurred across cultural divides; and the role art has played in overcoming cultural differences that have developed over many centuries. His 2007 publication and exhibition, “The Art of New Mexico: How the West is One,” presented aesthetic fusions from 1880 to the present as the “one-ness” of New Mexico.

Dr. Traugott will introduce workshop participants to the tri-cultural art of New Mexico. Guiding us through the New Mexico Museum of Art, he will discuss his 2012 exhibition, “It’s About Time: 14, 000 Years of New Mexico Art,” a presentation of 140 centuries of Southwestern art as a single chronology emphasizing affinities among the Anglo, Spanish, and Native American cultures rather than differences. He will also guide us through a permanent exhibit he mounted, “O’Keeffe’s New Mexico,” and will discuss research resources in the Museum.

Lesley Poling-Kempes, an independent scholar living in Abiquiú, has written a novel and three books of history about the Southwest. Two of them, Ghost Ranch and Valley of Shining Stone: The Story of Abiquiú, provide extensive histories of a place not only key to Georgia O’Keeffe’s life but of an area of New Mexico unlike any other in the state. She is also one of the editors of Georgia O’Keeffe and New Mexico: A Sense of Place, with Barbara Buhler Lynes and Frederick W. Turner, and contributed the essay “A Call to Place.” Poling-Kempes has served as supervising historian to Ghost Ranch (given by Pack to the Presbyterian Church and now an education center) and is a co-founder of the Ghost Ranch Archives. She gives history tours and lectures throughout the year.

In Abiquiú, Poling-Kempes will introduce Ghost Ranch to the participants in her presentation, “O’Keeffe’s Faraway Nearby,” and lead a tour of the property. Later, Poling-Kempes will discuss the history, landscape, and culture of Abiquiú and the land surrounding it, focusing on O’Keeffe’s life there. Participants will take a landscape tour of places where O’Keeffe painted and see specific landmarks that appear in her paintings.

Lois Palken Rudnick is Professor Emerita of American Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston, where she served as Chairperson of the American Studies Department from 1984-2009. Included in Dr. Rudnick’s many publications are three books about women writers of New Mexico: Cady Wells and Southwestern Modernism, Utopian Vistas: The Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture, and Mabel Dodge Luhan: New Women, New Worlds.

In Taos, Dr. Rudnick will discuss “Re-claiming the Land: Mabel Dodge Luhan, Alice Corbin Henderson, Mary Austin and the Physical and Cultural Landscapes of Northern New Mexico.” In her presentation, Rudnick will speak about the lives and writings of these three women, who wrote about northern New Mexico as an alternative to and revitalization of mainstream American culture during the 1920s and 1930s. All three were actively involved in preserving and promoting traditional Pueblo and Hispano cultures. Dr. Rudnick will discuss the costs and benefits of Anglo patronage culture, an issue that has broad relevance for other intercultural relations throughout 20th and 21st century US history.

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Workshop Staff

Workshop Director
Kathy A. Fedorko, Ph.D., will direct the workshop. Dr. Fedorko is Professor Emerita of English, Middlesex County College, Edison, New Jersey, where she taught for 39 years. She was one of the founders of the College’s Center for the Enrichment of Learning and Teaching and served as its director from 2003-2011. Dr. Fedorko is also a founding member of the Community College Humanities Association (CCHA), for which she served as Eastern Division President and Vice President and as a member of the CCHA Board of Directors. In her role as CCHA Eastern Division President and as the Director of the Middlesex County College Center for the Enrichment of Learning and Teaching, Dr. Fedorko has run over ten conferences. She has served on many NEH grants panels and as an evaluator and project mentor for several community college humanities grants. She has participated in two NEH Landmarks in American History and Culture workshops, “Concord, Massachusetts: A Center of Transcendentalism and Social Reform in the 19th Century” in 2008 and “The American Lyceum and Public Culture” in 2009. A Wharton scholar, Dr. Fedorko has published a book and many articles about Edith Wharton’s fiction. Her fascination with Georgia O’Keeffe, which began in the early 1980’s, led her, upon retiring, to propose this NEH Landmarks workshop.

Workshop Manager
David A. Berry, Executive Director of the Community College Humanities Association and Professor of History at Essex County College in Newark, NJ, will provide administrative and fiscal oversight for the workshop. He will also serve on the selection committee and participate on-site in the beginning of each weekly workshop. Professor Berry, who received the National Humanities Medal from President Clinton in 1997, has been manager or director of over twenty national and regional projects funded by the NEH, FIPSE, and the Ford Foundation and is a frequent panelist and speaker at both regional and national educational forums.

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Stipend, Tenure & Conditions of Award

Faculty members selected as NEH Summer Scholars will receive a stipend of $1,200 at the end of the residential workshop session. Stipends are intended to help cover travel expenses to and from the project location, books, and ordinary living expenses. Stipends are taxable.

NEH Summer Scholars are required to attend all scheduled meetings and to engage fully as professionals in all project activities. Participants who do not complete the full tenure of the project will receive a reduced stipend.

At the end of the project’s residential period, NEH Summer Scholars will be asked to provide an assessment of their workshop experience, especially in terms of its value to their personal and professional development. These confidential online evaluations will become a part of the project’s grant file.

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Lodging, Meals and Travel

Special double-occupancy room rates for five nights of the workshop have been arranged at the historic La Fonda on the Plaza in downtown Santa Fe, at the end of the legendary Santa Fe Trail and across from the 1887 St. Francis Cathedral Basilica. The cost of double-occupancy lodging ($72.50 per person per night plus 15.1875 % tax) will be deducted from an individual’s stipend. Find information about the La Fonda at www.lafondasantafe.com.

Special double-occupancy room rates for one night of the workshop have been arranged at the historic Sagebrush Inn in Taos. The cost of the double-occupancy lodging ($55.50 per person, plus 13.1875% tax), which includes a full, cooked-to-order breakfast, will be deducted from an individual’s stipend. Find information about the Sagebrush Inn at www.taoshotels.com/sagebrushinn.

A few single accommodations—for an additional charge—will be available on a first-come, first-served basis at both the La Fonda on the Plaza and the Sagebrush Inn. NEH Summer Scholars desiring single accommodations will need to make their own reservation with La Fonda on the Plaza and the Sagebrush Inn. These participants will receive the full stipend.

Similarly, any participants accompanied by family members or others will need to make their own lodging arrangements. Participants are strongly encouraged to stay with their workshop colleagues at La Fonda on the Plaza and the Sagebrush Inn. Informal group discussions and social interactions at the hotels are an important part of the overall workshop experience. Only participants may engage in workshop activities.

Santa Fe has a wide variety of eating venues, ranging from fast food to family-style to fine dining, within easy walking of La Fonda on the Plaza (which itself has three eating establishments). A list of restaurants will be provided at registration. Dinner in Taos will be at the Sagebrush Inn.

Workshop participants will arrange individual transportation to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Please check back for information about airports, trains, and shuttles.

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Workshop Participant Eligibility

Full-time faculty members, part-time lecturers, and adjunct faculty at American community colleges are eligible to participate in the Landmarks workshop. An applicant need not have an advanced degree in order to qualify. Faculty members at community colleges in the United States or its territorial possessions, or Americans teaching in foreign schools where at least 50 percent of the students are American nationals, are eligible for this program. Applicants must be United States citizens, residents of U.S. jurisdictions, or foreign nationals who have been residing in the United States or its territories for at least the three years immediately preceding the application deadline. Foreign nationals teaching abroad at non-U.S. chartered institutions are not eligible to apply. Individuals may not apply to study with an NEH Landmarks director who is a family member or a colleague.

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Application Checklist and Components

Print or Download a copy of the “NEH Workshop Application Information and Instructions”.

In brief, a completed application consists of one original and three copies of the following collated items:

• the completed application cover sheet,

• a résumé or short biography, and

• an application essay (no longer than two double-spaced pages) as outlined below.

• one letter of recommendation as described below.

Application Cover Sheet
Applicants must complete an NEH application cover sheet online and provide all the information requested to be considered eligible.

Please follow the prompts; be sure to indicate your first and second choices of workshop dates. Print out the cover sheet and add it to your application package. Finally, be sure to click on the “submit” button. At this point you will be asked if you want to fill out a cover sheet for another project. If you do, follow the prompts and select another project and then print out the cover sheet for that project as well. Note that filling out a cover sheet is not the same as applying, so there is no penalty for changing your mind and filling out a cover sheet for several projects.

Please Note: An individual may apply to up to two NEH summer projects (NEH Landmarks Workshops, NEH Summer Seminars, or NEH Summer Institutes), but may participate in only one. Please note that eligibility criteria differ between the NEH Landmarks Workshops and the NEH Summer Seminars and Institutes programs.

Résumé
Please include a résumé, curriculum vitae, or brief biography detailing your educational qualifications and professional experience. This should be no longer than five double-spaced pages.

Application Essay
The application essay should be no more than two double spaced pages. The essay should address (1) your professional background; (2) your interest in Georgia O’Keeffe and the history, culture, and landscape of New Mexico; (3) your special perspectives, skills, or experiences that would contribute to the workshop; and (4) how the experience would enhance your teaching and/or research.

Reference Letter
Each applicant should provide a letter of recommendation from his or her department chair/division head or other professional reference. It is helpful for referees to read a copy of the director’s description of the project and your application essay. Please ask your referee to sign across the seal on the back of the envelope containing the letter. Enclose the letter with your application.

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Selection Criteria

A selection committee (consisting of the workshop director, the workshop manager, and one of the project scholars) will read and evaluate all properly completed applications.

Special consideration is given to the likelihood that an applicant will benefit professionally and personally from the workshop experience. It is important, therefore, to address each of the following factors in the application essay:

1. your professional background;

2. your interest in the subject of the workshop;

3. your special perspectives, skills, or experiences that would contribute to the workshop; and

4. how the experience would enhance your teaching or professional service.

When choices must be made among equally qualified candidates, several additional factors are considered. Preference is given to applicants who have not previously participated in an NEH Landmarks Workshop, NEH Summer Seminar, or NEH Summer Institute, or who will significantly contribute to the diversity of the workshop.

Endowment programs do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, or age. For further information, write to NEH Equal Opportunity Officer, 1100 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20506. TDD: 202/606 8282 (for the hearing impaired only).

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Submission of Applications and Notification Procedure

Completed applications should be submitted to the project director, not the NEH, and must be postmarked no later than March 1, 2012. Application materials sent to the NEH will not be reviewed.

Successful applicants will be notified of their selection on April 2, 2012, and they will have until April 6, 2012 to accept or decline the offer.

Once you have accepted an offer to attend any NEH Summer Program (NEH Landmarks Workshop, NEH Summer Seminar, or NEH Summer Institute), you may not accept an additional offer or withdraw in order to accept a different offer.

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How to Submit Your Application

One original and three copies of your completed application should be postmarked no later than March 1, 2012 and should be addressed to:
 
Dr. Kathy Fedorko
Community College Humanities Association
c/o Essex County College
303 University Avenue
Newark, NJ 07102-1798

We look forward to receiving your application. If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Kathy Fedorko, the workshop director, at ccha.okeeffe@gmail.com, or David A. Berry, the workshop manager, at berry@essex.edu. You may also call him at 973.877.3577.

Sincerely,
Kathy Fedorko
Director, “Georgia O’Keeffe: Santa Fe, Abiquiú, and the New Mexico Landscape”

 
Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this website do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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