The University of Illinois Press is pleased to announce the receipt of a grant of $199,794 from the National Endowment for the Humanities Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan (#SHARP) awards program. The grant the Press received is part of the $59 million allocated to humanities organizations to provide direct emergency relief to institutions and organizations adversely affected by the pandemic. The grant will fund our Accelerating Accessibility: Expansion of the University of Illinois Press E-Book program, which will expand our e-books program by 200 titles; provide support for staff salaries and student workers; and increase the reach, usage, impact, and accessibility of our humanities publications. The new e-books will benefit scholars, students, and general readers by providing humanities content in formats that are mobile, easily searched, and suited to read-assistive tools.

University of Illinois Press Director, Laurie Matheson, said, “The pandemic has thrown into high relief the importance of making humanities resources available and accessible in digital forms. This support from the NEH brings us significantly closer to our long-term goal of making all UI Press in-print titles available in digital form. Having more of our content available in electronic form serves libraries as they seek more electronic resources, and connects the humanities scholarship we publish more directly with students as online learning continues to be normalized.”  

These new e-books will highlight the importance of humanities scholarship in contextualizing and understanding historical and contemporary struggles for equity and justice. Drawing from field-defining series in African American history, women’s history, Asian American studies, working-class history and other subject areas, this project will bring important stories of resistance, achievement, community building, and agency to new audiences.

The National Endowment for the Humanities press release can be found here.