The U.S. Senate approved Northwestern Prof. Dario Fernandez-Morera as the newest member of the National Endowment for the Humanities advisory board early last week.
Morera, who is a Spanish and comparative literature professor, said he will help decide how to appropriate NEH funds among researchers in the humanities.
The NEH distributes more than $100 million to cultural organizations such as museums, colleges and universities each year and is the largest supporter of humanities in America, according to its Web site.
“The national council on the humanities is the highest government council on the humanities in the U.S.,” Morera said. “Mainly, I will be discussing and voting for and against the ultimate allocation and distribution of taxpayer dollars (for the humanities).”
President Bush nominated Morera for a position on the 26-person council last October, but he had to wait for the Senate to come back in session this spring to be approved.
“If the president has nominated them, that’s usually all it takes,” said NEH spokesman Jim Turner in a November interview. “There’s not a whole lot of debate about these folks. It’s pretty clear on the face of things what their credentials are, and they’re all experts in their fields.”
Morera will travel to Washington four times each year during his six-year term to discuss pending research proposals already approved by the endowment panel and to advise the NEH chairman.
The NEH funds humanities projects in four areas: education, research, public programs and preservation. Each area has a committee whose members usually are assigned on the basis of their expertise, Turner said.
Morera said he hopes to make a difference by creating a greater diversity of viewpoints on the council.
“Humanities projects, like the universities where most of these projects originate, often fail to foster and promote certain values and certain ideals,” he said.
This is problematic, he said, because sometimes students are not exposed to viewpoints that represent different factions of the population.
In his own classes, Morera tries to show students how classical Spanish literature is still relevant in the world today through newspaper articles and trips to the movies.
“He is incredibly intelligent,” said Brad Cutler, a Weinberg senior who studied under Morera during Winter Quarter. “He tries, but he can’t share everything he knows about it, because it’s too complex to understand.”
Morera said he primarily is interested in the Renaissance; but he also writes about modern fiction, poetry, and cultural and theoretical issues. He came to NU in 1978, after receiving his doctorate from Harvard University.
He teaches humanities courses on Renaissance culture and philosophy; comparative literature courses on criticism, fiction, and poetry; and Hispanic Studies classes on fiction, poetry, drama and theory.
He has written books, articles and essays in English and Spanish and reviewed articles in scholarly publications for the humanities. His most recent book, “American Academia and the Survival of Marxist Ideas,” examined theoretical and cultural issues of intellectual life in America.
“I enjoy being paid for reading and writing and talking about what I am interested in,” he said. “It’s a great job if you can get it.”
