Claudia Stokes Receives a $45,000 NEH Grant

Englishprofessor Claudia Stokes, Ph.D., has been awarded a $45,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for her critical edition of the religious works of Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Stokes' edition is part of the Collected Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe, a series edited by Susan Belasco and Joan D. Hedrick that will be published by Oxford University Press. Stowe is best known for her bestselling blockbuster Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), but she was also a prolific writer who published other novels as well as travel writings, children's literature, and more. Though she was one of the most popular American writers of the 19th century, all of her works besides Uncle Tom's Cabin have been out of print for a century, and this series seeks to restore her wider, influential literary career.

As one of the largest funders of humanities programs in the country, the NEH has a rigorous review process for grant proposals, something Stokes knows well as a reviewer for the organization herself. Out of 993 applications, Stokes was one of the 77 the NEH decided to fund this year.

"I think that this project was in this perfect sweet spot for the NEH because, on the one hand, it takes Stowe's work as a theologian seriously, and on the other hand, it's about feminist recovery," Stokes says. "So, I feel this project is very fundable because it satisfies different political impulses."

Stokes began her research on Stowe's religious writings back in Spring 2022. Since then, she's been working full time on the project with the help of Trinity undergraduate researchers. Stokes has worked with two Mellon Initiative Summer Undergraduate Research Fellows: English majors Dean Zach '24 (in Summer 2022) and Emma Utzinger '24 (in Summer 2023), whom she says were "enormously helpful."

In Spring 2023, Stokes continued this close work with students in her inaugural Scholarly Editions Lab, a one-credit-hour English course funded by the Mellon Initiative that gives students the opportunity to transcribe, collate, and annotate Stowe's primary documents.

"Dr. Stokes created a community in this lab. We worked together, we learned together, and most importantly, we explored Stowe's writings together," says Dale Martin '25, a junior double-majoring in English and history. "Dr. Stokes' dedication to preserving Stowe's vast body of work and opening up her legacy to wider audiences is a project I am so glad to have been a part of. Dr. Stokes is one of the most passionate scholars I have ever met, a quality which shines through both in her pedagogical work and personal research."

Together, Stokes' lab students transcribed almost the entirety of the first volume of her critical edition.

"The students just transcribed everything-we're talking over 100 periodical pieces by Stowe. I can't overstate how important the students' contribution has been. I taught them all these different stages of scholarly editing, and they just ate it up," Stokes says. "They shaved years off the project."

Although Stokes' will be on sabbatical for the one-year grant, she imagines spending most of next year in her office working on the second volume of her edition. While the first volume focuses on the periodical pieces Stowe published over 30 years, the second volume focuses on two religious books. In the first one, Woman in Sacred History (1873), Stowe draws on Christian, Jewish, and Muslim theology to demonstrate the importance of women who've been overlooked in the Bible. In the second book, Footsteps of the Master (1876), Stowe illustrates the influence of women on Jesus throughout his life.

"Stowe would not say she was a feminist," Stokes says, "but we can definitely see her interest in elevating women's moral authority. She's very aware that women don't get a lot of attention in Scripture and religious history, and she is often motivated by a desire to correct the omission of women and bring them out of hiding."