Benedictine University Professor Awarded $195K Humanities Grant

LISLE, IL — A Benedictine University history professor has been given a $195,000 grant to collaborate with scholars from around the world to produce an annotated translation of a 16th Century travel narrative about China.

Kaveh Hemmat is an assistant professor of history and theology at Benedictine’s school of liberal arts. He, along with his fellow collaborators, will produce a translation of “The Book Of China”, which was first written by a Persian merchant who toured China.

Hemmat specializes in the premodern Islamic world, and teaches courses at Benedictine in history, global studies and interdisciplinary seminars on culture and history. The grant was provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, which provides funding to only about 23 percent of applicants as part of the program, the university said in a news release.

“This is a great honor for the university and our college of liberal arts,” university President Charles Gregory said in the release. “The completion of the NEH grant is intense, our team worked tirelessly on their submission, and we look forward to seeing their work.”

Hemmat was assisted in the grant submission by Krissy Dulek, the university’s director of corporate, foundation government grants, the school said.

The grants were announced by NEH earlier this month when the organization said it was funding 239 projects, totaling $28.4 million. This round of funding supports research efforts, education, preservation, digital and public programs. NEH was founded in 1965 and since that time has awarded more than $5.6 billion for humanities projects through more than 64,000 grants.