HOLLAND - For the second consecutive year, two members of the Hope College faculty have received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Dr. Natalie Dykstra, assistant professor of English, and Dr. Joseph LaPorte, associate professor of philosophy, have each received "2005-2006 Fellowships for College Teachers and Independent Scholars" from the NEH. Each will be using the fellowships as they work on book projects.

The NEH awarded only 195 awards nationwide, totaling $7.4 million. Dykstra and LaPorte both received $40,000, the maximum.

Last year, Dr. John Cox of the English faculty and Dr. Anne Larsen of the French faculty both received fellowships to support work on book projects during the current, 2004-05 school year.

This year's award is the second for LaPorte, who had also received an NEH fellowship for work during 2000-01.

Dykstra's project is tentatively titled "Still Life: The Photographs of Marian 'Clover' Adams." Adams, Dykstra noted, is most remembered for who her husband was and how she died, but deserves greater recognition for what she did in life.

"People are interested in her because she committed suicide and because she was married to Henry Adams," Dykstra said. "I want people to be interested in her because of her photographs."

Clover Adams took up photography in 1883, two years before her death. Although her husband, a Harvard historian who was descended from two U.S. presidents, is highly regarded for his contributions as a writer, Dykstra believes that Clover Adams's photographs - showing friends and family, pets, and interior and exterior locales - also have much to offer, providing insights into 19th century America and a woman's place in it. Adams, Dykstra said, left behind not only the images but also a great deal of information about her photography, including the meticulous notes kept while she did her own darkroom work and references in her letters.

Dykstra's interest in Clover Adams began while she pursued her doctorate at the University of Kansas, where her dissertation focused on self-representation in women's autobiographical writing in the 19th and early 20th century. After completing her Ph.D., she conducted research through a Ruth R. Miller Fellowship in Women's History from the Massachusetts Historical Society, which houses Adams's photographs and other materials.

She plans to include many of Adams's photographs in the book. The volume will also feature an updated biography, since the last biography of Adams was published in 1982, as well as several chapters that will put the photographs in their cultural context.

Dykstra has been a member of the Hope faculty since 2000. Her research emphases are reflected in courses that she teaches such as "Photography and Literature" and "Telling Lives: Studies in Women's Autobiographical Prose."

Her scholarship has included chapters and articles contributed to books and academic journals, as well as presentations during numerous professional conferences. She has already made multiple presentations on her research on Adams, including during conferences in the U.S., Canada and England.

Dykstra graduated from Calvin College in 1986 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. She completed her master's at the University of Wyoming in 1992, and her doctorate in American studies at the University of Kansas in 2000.

LaPorte will be working on the project "Rigid Designation, Identity and Necessity for Properties." His work on this new project follows naturally from his work on his previous book , for which he received his previous NEH grant: "Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change," published in December of 2003.

"Both projects stem from my interest in epistemology, particularly in knowledge of necessary truth," he said, "so both projects are part of a larger, ongoing plan of research in a fundamental area that has fascinated philosophers since ancient times."

Through his 2000-01 fellowship, LaPorte examined the way that scientific inquiry refines the way that concepts are understood, which in turn affects how science progresses as future inquiry becomes based on the new understandings. In his new project, he will focus not on changes in the meanings of scientific terms, as before, but rather on the necessary features of properties or attributes that our terms presently refer to.

"This project examines attributes, like the attribute of being courageous, hot or painful," he said. "It examines what makes one attribute identical to 'another' (so to speak). There is a special examination of whether attributes describing our mental or spiritual life can be identical to physically describable attributes--for example, whether being in pain could be no more and no less than having certain neural activity going on."

LaPorte joined the Hope faculty in the fall of 1998. He is currently on a year-long sabbatical from teaching, working on projects including the beginning of another book, scholarly articles and presented papers, and an encyclopedia entry.

His primary research interests are the philosophy of biology, the philosophy of science, the philosophy of language and metaphysics, with areas of concentration including the nature and origin of knowledge and the philosophy of religion. He has had articles in numerous professional journals. LaPorte graduated from the Franciscan University of Steubenville in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts degree; earned his master's from University College London in 1993; and earned his doctorate from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1998.

NEH fellowships support individuals pursuing advanced research that contributes to scholarly knowledge or to the general public's understanding of the humanities. Recipients usually produce scholarly articles, monographs on specialized subjects, books on broad topics, archaeological site reports, translations, editions or other scholarly tools.

A total of 11 fellowships were awarded to scholars in Michigan. In addition to Hope, the Michigan institutions to have Fellows named are Calvin College, Central Michigan University, Oakland University, the University of Michigan and Wayne State University. Hope and the University of Michigan were the only institutions in the state to have multiple recipients.

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