Brigittine French Awarded NEH Grant to Study Maya Testimonies in Visual History Archive

Brigittine French, Professor of Anthropology and Assistant Vice President of Global Education, has been awarded a grant of $50,000 from the Humanities Collections and Reference Resources program of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The grant will support her project entitled "Maya Testimonies in the Visual History Archive: Transcribing, Translating, and Accessing Survivor Life Histories." 

"I am honored and excited to receive this grant, which will enable us to make significant progress in transcribing and translating oral histories of contemporary Maya people in Guatemala," said French. "This project is an important step in ensuring that these survivor life histories are accessible to a wider audience and can be used in research and teaching about genocide and peace and conflict studies." 

The project will focus on transcribing a subset of 650 oral histories related to the genocide of Indigenous Maya people in Guatemala from 1960 to 1996. The oral histories are held at the Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive at the University of Southern California. The transcriptions we will create will be in Mayan-Spanish or Kaqchikel and we also will pilot translations into English to facilitate broader use. 

Transcribing and translating these oral histories will allow them to be used more widely among both survivor communities and in comparative research on genocide and legacies of violence. Ultimately, French and her Maya collaborators hope to produce a complete set of transcriptions and translations of the oral histories. 

The grant is a testament to French’s dedication to advancing research and education about violence, human rights, testimony as well as her commitment to elevating public understandings of Indigenous peoples’ histories, languages, and identities in the Americas. Please join us in congratulating her on this well-deserved recognition. 

About the NEH  

National Endowment for the Humanities: Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at www.neh.gov.