The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded two grant fellowships to University of Michigan faculty members for their respective work in humanities-based advanced research programs—one focusing on social and political relations on the frontier of the Chinese Qing Empire, the other on the history of eugenics in the United States.

Erik Mueggler, professor of anthropology, and Alexandra Stern, professor of obstetrics and gynecology, American culture, history, and women's studies, were among university faculty and independent scholars who received the awards. The NEH recently announced $28.6 million in grants to support 233 humanities projects nationwide.

Erik Mueggler's $6,000 grant is for his project "Literacy, Sovereignty, Bondage: A Native Hereditary Chieftainship in Qing China." The project involves research and writing leading to publication of a book on social and political relations on the frontier of the Chinese Qing Empire, based on analysis of an archive in two languages: Nasu and bureaucratic Chinese.

Stern's $350,000 grant is for her project "Examination of Eugenics in America." The project will produce an online resource on the history of eugenics in the United States, containing a privacy-protected dataset on approximately 30,000 individuals who experienced involuntary sterilization, along with contextual features such as data visualizations, story lines, and thematic pathways.

The NEH, an independent federal agency created in 1965, supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation.

*An earlier version of this announcement incorrectly stated the amount of Erik Mueggler's grant.