Four Duke Divinity School students are among the winners of grants for research projects that use the Religion in North Carolina Digital Collection. The grants, which total $10,000, will be used to fund projects over the next year that rely on the collection's anticipated 8,000 volumes of materials on North Carolina's religious history.

The students are part of a Duke research group in American religious history that will share a grant. Aaron Griffith (Th.D.'17), will work on a project entitled “Authorities Could Shut Up His Body in Prison, But They Could Not Imprison His Spirit: North Carolina Methodist Prison Ministry and Metaphor"; Matthew Scott Hoehn (M.Div.'16), on “Protestant or Baptist/Methodist/Presbyterian? The Tension Between Pan-Protestantism and Denominational Distinctives Felt by North Carolina Religious Groups between 1861 and 1910”; Jacquelynn Price-Linnartz (Th.D.'15), on “Seeing Is Believing: The Religious Imagination of Historical North Carolina"; and Amy Whisenand (Th.D.'18), on “Songs of Peace and War in the Midst of War.” Three students in Duke University's Graduate Program in Religion were also part of the research group: Jamie Brummitt, Andrew Coates, and Sonia Hazard.

The Religion in North Carolina Digital Collection project, which began in 2012, is a collaboration between Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Wake Forest University. The collection highlights and provides new insights into the religious diversity of North Carolina through primary source materials that have previously been difficult for researchers to access. Representatives from the three universities and a local church chose the winning grant proposals.

Said Ken Woo, doctoral fellow with the project, "The work funded with these grants will help provide important data for user analysis and for gauging the Religion in NC project's impact and reach. We were pleased to receive fascinating applications from throughout North Carolina, originating from academic institutions, religious denominations, local congregations, and independent researchers."

Details on the other grant winners are available online.

The North Carolina Digital Collection project is made possible through funding from the Federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by the State Library of North Carolina, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources.