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Steinbeck Institute class in intertidal at Hopkins Marine Station

John Steinbeck: Social Critic and Ecologist

John Steinbeck accepting the Nobel Prize, coast line, Bixby bridge
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John Steinbeck (1902-1968)

HAS BEEN CALLED THE CONSCIENCE OF AMERICA. He wrote more than thirty books, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 for The Grapes of Wrath,  and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962 and the United States Medal of Freedom in 1964. This website honors Steinbeck as a novelist, journalist, scientist, ecologist, historian, and social commentator.

See 2022 Projects

 

THE STEINBECK INSTITUTE: Because of Coronavirus, the July 2020 Institute is postponed to July 3-23, 2022. All applications from 2020 will be held (unless withdrawn) and new applications will be accepted when the NEH posts application guidelines in late fall, 2021. If you submitted an application for the 2020 institute and wish to activate that application for 2022, you MUST either: a.) contact us by email to indicate your wish to have your 2020 application considered for 2022 OR b) resubmit and update your 2020 application and submit by the deadline.

Sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Steinbeck Institute, "John Steinbeck, Voice of America, Voice of a Region," was held in 2007, 2009, 2011, and 2013. In 2016 and 2018 the institute was renamed “John Steinbeck: Social Critic and Ecologist” to more clearly reflect its mission of exploring intersections between the humanities and sciences. The first part of the 2022 Institute will focus on John Steinbeck's Salinas Valley fiction, and the second part on Steinbeck’s ecological vision, shared by his closest friend Edward F. Ricketts, marine biologist. From July 3-23, 2022, participants will come to the Monterey Peninsula, two hours south of San Francisco, to study John Steinbeck's writing, his cultural impact, and the ecological impact of Steinbeck and Ricketts. The institute includes field studies in the Salinas Valley and on the Monterey coast.

The 2022 Institute will be held at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this Institute, do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.