ISSUED: 2 January 2017
MEDIA CONTACT: Valerie Owens
SHEPHERDSTOWN, WV — Shepherd University is accepting applications until March 1 for the 2017 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) summer institute “Voices from the Misty Mountains: Appalachian Writers and Mountain Culture.”
The institute will take place July 9-29 at Shepherd and is open to full-time and part-time classroom teachers and librarians in public, charter, independent, and religiously affiliated schools, as well as to home schooling parents. Other K-12 school personnel, including administrators, substitute teachers, and classroom professionals, are also eligible to participate.
Highlights of the institute will include participation by novelist and playwright Silas House, poet Nikki Giovanni, and storyteller Adam Booth. Those who attend the institute will see plays and dramatic storytelling workshops at the Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF). They will also attend storytelling and Appalachian music workshops and programs hosted by Dr. James Broomall, director of the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War; Rachael Meads, ethnomusicologist and director of the Performing Arts Series at Shepherd; and Dr. Sylvia Bailey Shurbutt, Appalachian scholar and summer institute director. The institute will culminate in an Appalachian road trip to the Culture Center in Charleston, Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine, the town of Thurmond in the New River Gorge, and Hawks Nest State Park.
Application information can be found at www.shepherd.edu/neh. Click the application, letter to participants, and eligibility criteria links. For additional information, contact Shurbutt at sshurbut@shepherd.edu.
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