President Trump on Friday nominated Jon Parrish Peede as chairman of the National Endowment of the Humanities, bringing to an end speculation about who would take the helm at an agency he has repeatedly targeted for elimination.

Mr. Peede, a scholar of Southern literature by training, was publisher of the Virginia Quarterly Review from 2011 to 2016, and has also worked in various capacities at the National Endowment for the Arts, the humanities endowment’s sister agency. He has been serving as the agency’s acting director since May, when William D. Adams, an Obama appointee, stepped down, citing personal reasons and a desire to let the transition go forward.

In a statement, Mr. Peede, who has already created a new set of N.E.H. grants focused on infrastructure needs at cultural institutions, summed up his mission as “ensuring that all Americans have access to our country’s cultural resources.”

The N.E.H., along with the arts endowment, has been the site of ideological battles since the culture wars of the early 1990s, with conservatives often accusing it of pushing a left-wing agenda.