‘BackStory’ show gets federal grant

“BackStory with the American History Guys” — a radio show hosted by current and former University of Virginia faculty — has received a $74,990 development grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The grant given to the show, which is produced by VFH Radio at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, was provided through NEH’s “Grants for America’s Media Makers” program, which supports media projects that explore events, figures or developments in the humanities in new ways.

In each “BackStory” episode, historians Peter Onuf and Brian Balogh, both UVa professors, and Ed Ayers, former dean of UVa’s College of Arts & Sciences and current president of the University of Richmond, use a topic from the headlines to drill down into America’s past.

After five months on the air, the program, launched in June, was awarded the 2008 Helen and Martin Schwartz Prize by the Federation of State Humanities Councils, a national award recognizing three outstanding humanities projects annually.

In addition to being syndicated in Virginia by three stations, recent “BackStory” episodes have been broadcast, mostly in prime time, by 25 stations in 15 other states and in Washington.

Topics on the program have included discussion of controversial wars, environmental crises, debt and racial “purity.”