UW-Madison dictionary to be honored in Washington, D.C.

UW–Madison’s Dictionary of American Regional English will be one of only six projects to be showcased as part of Humanities Advocacy Day at Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on Monday, March 15.

DARE is a multivolume reference work that documents words, phrases and pronunciations that vary across the country from region to region. Based on interviews with Americans in more than 1,000 communities, it provides a comprehensive collection of materials dating from the colonial period to the present.

Humanities Advocacy Day promotes federal support for scholarly research, education and public programs in the humanities. The other five projects, chosen by the Association of American Universities, are “Eleanor Roosevelt and Human Rights” at George Washington University; “The Rhetoric of Inquiry” at the University of Iowa; projects on the Louisiana Purchase and veterans’ oral histories at Tulane University; and the Digital Library Initiative at the University of California, Los Angeles.