The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has announced a nearly $300,000 grant to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West for its continued work on the Papers of William F. Cody (the Papers). The latest award of $299,756 brings the total of NEH grants for the project to $700,000.
In its latest round of awards, NEH distributed a total of $79 million in grants to 290 humanities projects and programs. The recent grant for the Papers was one of two for Wyoming; the Wyoming Humanities Council also received a grant for general operations. The grant to the Center originated from the Scholarly Editions category, its third such grant to add to funding for this key resource for scholarly examination of William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s life and enterprises.
“William F. Cody was a prolific writer of letters, a hot topic for the media, and the subject of an abundance of books, journals, and newspaper articles,” Jeremy Johnston, the Papers of William F. Cody Managing Editor says. “It goes without saying that the material about Buffalo Bill seems without end. The latest NEH grant allows us the resources and personnel to continue this incredible work.”
The Papers launched in 2007 with a $300,000 appropriation from the Wyoming State Legislature. In addition to that appropriation and its NEH awards, the project has since received funding from Wyoming Community Foundation, Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, along with a number of generous, private donors and foundations.
As a collaborative effort between the Center’s McCracken Research Library, Ball State University, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the Papers collects, edits, and publishes material from the period of William F. Cody’s birth (1846) to well beyond his death in 1917—in print and in an online, open-access, digital edition. This material is published at codyarchive.org, the William F. Cody Archive (Cody Archive), and is available at no cost to a diverse international audience from casual enthusiasts and students to historians and scholars. With continued NEH funding, the Papers of William F. Cody is able to expand the documentary record of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West’s international phase by focusing on the show’s tours of Italy, Spain, Scotland, and Wales. Additionally, the Papers increases its focus on varying perceptions of American Indians as they moved through different European regions.
In September 2015, the Center of the West was one of fifty institutions recognized as part of the NEH 50th anniversary year. Grants for both the Papers and the Paul Dyck Plains Indian Buffalo Culture Collection were noted as projects that have enriched and shaped American lives.
For more information about the Papers of William F. Cody, visit codyarchive.org or contact Managing Editor Jeremy Johnston, [email protected] or 307-578-4032.
Since 1917, the award-winning Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming, has devoted itself to sharing the story of the authentic American West. The Center is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution. For additional information, visit centerofthewest.org or the Center’s Facebook page.