Staten Islander, history professor, and mom of 7 wins prestigious grant

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – The National Endowment for the Humanities just announced a major round of awards and a professor from Staten Island was honored with a prestigious grant in the amount of $349,971.

Dawn Marie Hayes, who holds a doctorate degree and is a professor of medieval European history at Montclair State University in Montclair, N.J., won the NEH grant to reconstruct an overlooked period in Italy’s history.

The project, titled “Documenting the Past, Triaging the Present and Conserving a Legacy for the Future: A Web App for Sicily’s Norman Heritage Project Description,” aims to develop a bilingual, interactive platform for digital access to the documentation of monuments constructed on the island of Sicily during the late-eleventh and twelfth centuries.

In 2019, Dr. Hayes received a $50,000 Level One award in this competition (NEH’s Humanities Collections and Reference Resources), which enabled the prototype that is currently live. During this phase, she published an article and a chapter on the project.

“My husband and I presented the work as part of an international conference, trying to get the word out and invite feedback,” she said. “Then it was on to securing Level Two funding - which could make up to an additional $350,000 available to us. This isn’t easy [because] the program has +/- 18% funding rate. And of those applications, understandably, the majority support American-focused projects.

“So you can imagine the satisfaction that came with securing funding in such tight competition. But I think we did a good job with the Level One funds, so we had a strong record. The evaluators’ comments also reflected the cutting-edge, interdisciplinary nature of the project, which is attractive.”

THE START OF A DIGITAL PROJECT

This new grant will enable a team of researchers and students to further develop a web app, The Norman Sicily Project, available in English and Italian, that is dedicated to one of the most fascinating — but also one of the most overlooked — periods in Italian history.

“People often have some knowledge of northern Italy and its past (especially the Renaissance), but many fewer have any sense of the ambitious kingdom that existed in the south (the state developed from +/- 1061-1194), centered in Sicily but also taking up a good part of the southern Italian mainland, for about 150 years,” said Dr. Hayes to SILive. “And that’s a shame because the vast majority of Italian Americans, including myself, have their roots in the south, the region of Italy that traditionally has been less wealthy and developed.”

Dr. Hayes explained The Norman Kingdom of Sicily was built slowly as a group of French warriors led by an extraordinary family wrested control of Sicily from the Muslim overlords who had controlled the island from North Africa (whose cultural influence has helped create a distinctive Sicilian culture).

“That society and its culture is so special that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization added nine structures from this culture to its famed World Heritage List in 2015,” she said. “There are many others — hundreds of sites — that are abandoned, falling apart, understaffed, difficult to access, etc.

“In 2004, the first time I had visited Sicily, I was so struck by the Arab-Norman past, one that, in spite of my academic training, I had learned almost nothing about as a student.”

SHARING SICILIAN HISTORY

For 10 years, Dr. Hayes began taking pictures of monuments in Sicily every summer, having conversations with the locals, as well as with some of Sicily’s cultural authorities, eventually conceiving the idea of sharing the photos and knowledge through a digital project. She shared it with her husband, a senior software engineer and thus, the idea of the web app was born.

The couple embarked on a journey to locate all of the monasteries that existed in the kingdom, identifying them on a map, offering information about them, and determining the climactic, animal, and human stresses these buildings are enduring. These studies will be aided by LiDAR technology that is available in many people’s iPhones.

“Many of these buildings, now 1,000 years old, are subject to everything from wildfires, earthquakes, high winds, seasonal flooding, and, in the east, Europe’s most active large volcano, Mt. Etna,” said Hayes. “There is little maintenance, so these forces are truly menacing.

“In addition to geoscience fieldwork with a colleague at The University of West Indies, Barbados, a desperately needed UX/UI redesign will be done (compliments of Pratt Institute), technical development by software engineers, including my husband, and even network analysis by a mathematician colleague who will be investigating relationships between monuments as well as between people and monuments that the are not immediately discernible,” she added.

“One of the most endearing thing about the project, I think, is that it offers Sicilians an opportunity to share their knowledge about their own history,” said Hayes. “If a local historian gives me information and I can’t corroborate it, I still include it in the project, with a caveat that it has not (yet) been corroborated by a published source. I confess to having a soft spot for that island.”

“I have been teaching its history for years now and have been inviting students to participate in the project - both here and on the ground in Sicily. I began one of the first American university summer study abroad programs in Sicily in 2006 and I am excited to share that Montclair State is about to launch a unique pre-college program for 16- and 17-year-olds this July,” she continued.

Students will be earning three college credits while being based in Taormina and traveling to a number of the island’s historical sites over nine days. Although the program is open to high school students from across the country, almost half of the students will be from Staten Island, in its inaugural year, drawing on New Dorp, Tottenville, Staten Island Tech and St. Joseph by-the-Sea high schools.

ABOUT DR. HAYES

A full-time professor for 25 years and an alumna of Susan Wagner High School, Hayes has taught at Iona College (1998-2002), the Borough of Manhattan Community College (2002-2003) and Montclair State University (since September 2003). She taught at the College of Staten Island (1996-1998) while she was earning her Ph.D. She was promoted to full professor in 2019.

Hayes has authored two books, the most recent about Sicily’s first king, and numerous articles. She has presented at many conferences here in the U.S. and in Europe.

Hayes and her husband, Joe Hayes, have been married since 1994 and are the parents of: Joseph Jr. (29 years old), Anastasia (28), Madeleine (27), Alessandra (22), Aidan (17), Adriano (14), and Carlo (12).

“We are in Sicily almost every summer and I am so happy to have reconnected with family in Palermo,” said Hayes. “I try to visit them every summer as well. As for my husband and kids, each of them has endured -- at one time or another -- at least one hair-raising trip to some off-the-beaten path site in Sicily. They have been very, very patient with me. And I am so grateful to them for that.”