CNU professor receives $40,000 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship

News Release - Feb. 1, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media contact:
Carolyn Cuthrell
Office of Communications and Public Relations
carolyn.cuthrell@cnu.edu
(757) 594-7331

(NEWPORT NEWS, Va.) — Christopher Newport University’s Assistant Professor of English Sharon Rowley, Ph.D., will receive a prestigious National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowship for her research into a group of relatively neglected Old English historical manuscripts. Dr. Rowley is the first faculty member at CNU to receive this prestigious, highly competitive award. The $40,000 grant was one of only 153 awarded this year out of 1,398 applications to the NEH program, which represents an 11 percent acceptance rate. The award was announced via letter in December.

The award provides 9-12 months research leave for Dr. Rowley to complete her research during the fall 2007 and spring 2008 semesters. During this time, Dr. Rowley will complete her book entitled, Reading the Old English Bede in Its Manuscript Contexts. The book challenges long-held scholarly beliefs about these historic manuscripts. It will demonstrate how these works were used for reading, preaching and sharing historical knowledge in England from the 9th to 16th centuries. The book will culminate 10 years of research Dr. Rowley has invested in the project.

Dr. Rowley explained that the last edition of these Old English manuscripts was made in 1896 and that revisiting the works using contemporary editorial theories is long overdue. “Ignoring these manuscripts could cause us to lose the ability to read and understand them. They contain a lot of important information from our past about the politics, patronage and history of English before the 9th century.”