Guest Opinion: Celebrating 50 years of the humanities in Delaware
Michele Anstine has served as the executive director of Delaware Humanities for four-and-a-half years. Prior to her appointment, she worked in public history in Delaware for over two decades.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Delaware Humanities’ first public-facing activities in Delaware.
You may be wondering, what is Delaware Humanities or, for that matter, what are the humanities and how do they affect my daily life? It would be limiting to view them only as subjects that might not have been your favorites in school, like history, philosophy, language arts and foreign languages. The humanities are also ways to interpret, document and understand what it means to be human. They are essential in helping us understand who we are and where we come from, and to find common ground with one another when our experiences and beliefs are very different. And, with all of the information that we take in every day, they are also tools that help us to make informed decisions.
Delaware Humanities is the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Created in 1965 with the National Endowment for the Arts, NEH is a federal agency that serves as the largest funder of humanities projects in the United States. By the early 1970s, affiliated but private nonprofit state humanities councils were being formed across the nation to work with organizations in their states to carry out programming directly for the public.
In Delaware, professors at the University of Delaware embraced this task and, with the aid of the first executive director in 1972, spread the word to local institutions like colleges, museums and libraries that federal funds were available to support their humanities projects. The Delaware Humanities Council Inc., known throughout most of its life as the Delaware Humanities Forum, created a grant program to provide funding to organizations large and small across the state and gradually developed programs such as a speaker’s bureau to provide talks about history, heritage, folklore and other topics of interest to Delawareans.
Over our 50 years, Delaware Humanities has provided grants or developed programs for film screenings, exhibits, community discussions, lectures, heritage days, conferences, cultural exchanges, documentaries, historical reenactments, teacher workshops and curriculum development that have covered subjects like ethics, public policy, criminal justice, history, folklife, literature, technology, international studies, the environment and even outer space. Chances are we have collaborated with a library, museum, college, school, historical society or cultural/community organization that is meaningful to you, and we approach the work we do with curiosity and an intent to connect people and organizations in the exploration of Delaware and its people.
Delaware Humanities’ 50th anniversary has provided an opportunity for us to look back at our accomplishments but also to look around us at the needs in our state and to prepare for the future. Over the last three years, and amid the pandemic, we revised our organizational mission and vision, and identified four core concepts to focus our grantmaking and programs: Stories & Histories, Culture & Community, Health & Environment and Media & Democracy. We recently affirmed our commitment to supporting the greater humanities community in Delaware by defining our audience as organizations offering humanities programs, with a focus on small organizations and underserved communities. We learned a lot about these organizations during the pandemic, when Delaware Humanities was able to distribute over $1 million in Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act and American Rescue Plan Act funding to help community organizations continue to provide services, innovate and, in many cases, survive. We continue to bring hundreds of thousands of dollars into Delaware annually to actively support the work of vital community organizations.
In the past year, Delaware Humanities partnered with the Delaware Division of Historical & Cultural Affairs and the Delaware Museum Association to create a position and programming to build capacity among small museums, historical societies and cultural organizations. Like Delaware Humanities, these are the small, often invisible powerhouses that preserve and share our collective stories — your experiences in Delaware’s coastal communities; or as an Air Force or DuPont Co. transplant; or farming or raising a family; or mine, growing up in rural Kent County, living through books from the bookmobile and taking in all of the different backgrounds of the neighbors who regularly visited my family’s country store.
This is the humanities — exploring, documenting and striving to understand human experiences and appreciate them for their complexity. We and our communities are strengthened by recognizing them and finding ways to connect with each other despite our differences.
