Craig Farmer Accepted into National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Workshop

March 30, 2021

Craig Farmer, Art History Instructor, has a busy summer ahead as he has been accepted into a week-long National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Teacher Workshop entitled “Mapping a New World: Places of Conflict and Colonization in 17th Century New England.” Farmer was pleased to share the news, adding, “This will be my third NEH workshop and I’m looking forward to bringing into my classroom what I will learn.”

Farmer will also be teaching the art history component for his third summer in MCAD’s Pre-College program. For two weeks in July, students will study in five different art concentrations: Animation, Comics, Graphic Design, Illustration, and Painting. In addition to having the students in a classroom, Craig will lead field trips to Mia and present a movie night entitled “Art History Goes to the Movies.”

Participants in the NEH Summer Teacher Workshop will explore the history and landscape of 1600s New England, with an emphasis on the role of geography and place. The course will be a blend of synchronous and asynchronous opportunities for participants to engage meaningfully with partners at the workshop’s featured landmarks including Plimoth Patuxet Museums, the Mashantucket Pequot Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The workshop is an opportunity to engage deeply with the region by visiting and learning at major historical landmarks such as the site of Plymouth colony, the city of Boston with its deep connections to Native American history, and museums and libraries that together house collections and exhibitions that bring to life this complex story of land, power, identity, and community. Teachers will engage with leading scholars and primary source materials, including period maps, letters, land deeds, and narratives that are grounded in their geographic location. These materials illuminate how the different ways and perspectives with which English settlers and multifaceted Native communities viewed the New England region shaped their relationships and interactions throughout the 1600s.

Craig Farmer has been teaching art history at the high school level since 1992. He started his teaching career at the Field School of Washington, DC. From the summer of 2008 through 2019 he was an adjunct instructor in The University of Minnesota’s Curriculum and Instruction Department. Craig holds a B.A. in art history and history from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and an M.A. in teaching from the University of St. Thomas. He was the graduation speaker for the classes of 2002, 2011, and 2015.

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency created in 1965. It is one of the largest funders of humanities programs in the United States. NEH serves and strengthens our republic by promoting excellence in the humanities and conveying the lessons of history to all Americans. The Endowment accomplishes this mission by awarding grants for top-rated proposals examined by panels of independent, external reviewers. NEH grants typically go to cultural institutions, such as museums, archives, libraries, colleges, universities, public television, and radio stations, and to individual scholars.

Since 1965, the Endowment has opened new worlds of learning for the American public with noteworthy projects such as:

• Seven thousand books, 16 of which have won Pulitzer Prizes, and 20 of which have received the Bancroft Prize.
• The Civil War, the landmark documentary by Ken Burns viewed by 38 million Americans
• The Library of America editions of novels, essays, and poems celebrating America’s literary heritage
• The United States Newspaper Project, which cataloged and microfilmed 63.3 million pages of historic newspapers, paved the way for the National Digital Newspaper Program and its digital repository, Chronicling America
• Annual support for 56 states and territories to help support some 56,000 lectures, discussions, exhibitions and other programs each year