WASHINGTON, D.C. (March 2, 2018) — Today President Trump announced his intent to
nominate Jon Parrish Peede as the 11th Chairman of the National
Endowment for the Humanities.
Peede joined NEH in April 2017 and is
the Senior Deputy Chairman, head of the agency. Under his leadership NEH has
created a new category of grants to support infrastructure and capacity-building at humanities institutions, issued emergency grants for cultural organizations
affected by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, expanded its grant offerings for museum exhibitions, and formed new partnerships
with Blue Star Families and the First Nations Development Institute for reading and discussion
initiatives for military families and the revitalization of Native American
languages.
“It is a distinct honor to be nominated
by President Donald J. Trump to serve as Chairman of the National Endowment for
the Humanities,” said NEH Senior Deputy Chairman Peede. “I look forward to the
opportunity to continue a career of public service focused on ensuring that all
Americans have access to our country’s cultural resources.”
Peede’s previous positions include
Publisher of the Virginia Quarterly Review at
the University of Virginia, Literature Grants Director at the National
Endowment for the Arts, Counselor to NEA Chairman Dana Gioia, Director of the
NEA Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience program, Director of
the NEA Big Read program, Director of Communications at Millsaps College, and
Editor at Mercer University Press.
As Publisher of the Virginia
Quarterly Review from 2011-2016, Peede acquired numerous Pulitzer
Prize-winning writers and edited interviews with Nobel laureates Alice Munroe
and Derek Walcott. Under his leadership the magazine increased its annual
online reach by more than 400,000 readers and expanded its paid readership to
51 countries.
From 2003-2011 Peede was appointed to
senior leadership roles at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), sister
agency to NEH. In addition to serving as Counselor to NEA Chairman Dana Gioia
for four years, Peede oversaw the agency’s funding of literary organizations
and fellowships to creative writers and translators. He also served as an
editorial advisor for bilingual poetry anthologies published in partnership
with the governments of China, Mexico, Northern Ireland, Pakistan, and Russia,
and managed the literature pavilion at the Library of Congress’ National Book
Festival.
As Director of the NEA Operation
Homecoming program he led writing workshops for U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan,
Bahrain, England, Italy, Kyrgyzstan, the Persian Gulf, and on domestic bases. He
co-produced an accompanying educational CD for the program.
At Mercer University Press from 1994 to
1996 Peede acquired and edited more than 25 books on the humanities,
literature, and Southern culture. These included colonial Georgia histories, a
study of Benjamin Franklin’s London years, Civil War biographies, a
photographic memoir of the Civil Rights Movement, and critical works on William
Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and other Southern writers.
Peede holds a bachelor’s degree in
English from Vanderbilt University, and a master’s in Southern Studies from the
University of Mississippi.
Peede has lectured at the Marine Corps
Command and Staff College, the University of Virginia, and other institutions, and
taught community college courses in literature and history.
He has served on the national council of
the Margaret Walker Center for the Study of the African-American Experience at
Jackson State University; the advisory committee of the Virginia Festival of
the book, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities; and the poet laureate
selection committee, state of Mississippi, office of the governor.
He is the coeditor of Inside the Church of Flannery O’Connor: Sacrament, Sacramental, and the
Sacred in Her Fiction (Mercer, 2007) and editor of a bilingual
anthology of contemporary American fiction (Lo que cuenta el vecino:
cuentos contemporáneos de los Estados Unidos [UNUM: Mexico City,
2008].) He has published widely in newspapers, magazines, academic journals,
books, and encyclopedias. As a speechwriter, he has written for a U.S.
President, First Lady, Librarian of Congress, and military and corporate
leaders.
Jon Parrish Peede was born and raised in
Mississippi and lives in Virginia with his family.
National Endowment for the Humanities: Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at: www.neh.gov.
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