Fitchburg State University Receives National Endowment for the Humanities Grant

Two professors at Fitchburg State University, a New England Council member, were recently awarded a grant from the Nation Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The grant will help fund a new digital analysis tool being developed at Fitchburg State that blends computer science, art history, and philosophy to help students and faculty research and study paintings.

The grant was awarded to professors Catherine Buell and Ricky Sethi, along with a collaborator at Bates College, for their project “Scientific Workflows, Image Analysis and Visual Stylometry in the Digital Analysis of Art.” The objective of the project is to develop a tool known as WAIVS (Workflows for Analysis of Images and Visual Stylometry), which will help to grow new research at the intersection of digital humanities, empirical aesthetics, and computer science. It will allow researchers to analyze paintings in a data-driven nature, and to better understand how artistic style affects how viewers understand and interact with art.

“There is a growing interest in applications of data analysis tools within disciplines traditionally associated with the humanities,” said Buell, whose research focusses on applied and computational mathematics.

Founded in 1894, Fitchburg State University is a public institution in north central Massachusetts. With more than 7,000 full and part-time students, Fitchburg State works to integrate professional programs with liberal arts and sciences studies. The New England Council congratulates Fitchburg State on its groundbreaking research.