Two one-week workshops for seventy-two schoolteachers on school desegregation in Virginia.
This project offers two one week workshops on the topic of school desegregation in Virginia. Participants include 72 Grade 6-12 social studies/history teachers as a total. In these workshops, participants will visit significant historical sites associated with the topic, learn how to use primary sources in the archives and created their own curriculum on the topic. The first workshop will take place from July 9th through July 14th, 2017, and the second from July 23rd through July 28th, 2017.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two schoolteachers on the ancient Hopewell Indian culture of eastern North America.
The Creative Learning Factory at the Ohio History Connection seeks support in the amount of $179,596.05 for a Landmarks of American History and Culture workshop entitled "Following in Ancient Footsteps: The Hopewell in Ohio." The goal of the program is to increase Summer Scholars’ knowledge and understanding of the cultural heritage of American Indians by introducing them to noteworthy Ancient American sites in Ohio: the Newark Earthworks, Fort Ancient, Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, and Serpent Mound. By visiting these internationally-significant sites in connection with scholarly discussions, Summer Scholars will gain an appreciation for the complexity of ancient American Indian culture and gain expertise in the use and interpretation of historic sites.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two schoolteachers on the history and culture of the Mississippi Delta, with music as a focus.
The Most Southern Place on Earth: Music, History, and Culture of the Mississippi Delta was presented with NEH support in June and July of 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015. The Most Southern Place on Earth addresses all four of the goals of the Landmarks program. It informs participants of the important role that the Mississippi Delta has played in American history, a role that is very often ignored or overlooked. Since the Delta is a place of “mean poverty and garish opulence” (according to Will Campbell), intellectual exploration of its heritage requires building a community of civility. Our approach is highly experiential and tells heritage stories at the places where they happened.
Two one-week Landmarks workshops for seventy-two schoolteachers on the poetry of Emily Dickinson in relation to her biography and surroundings.
Unpublished in her lifetime, Emily Dickinson’s poetry is considered among the finest in the English language. Her intriguing biography and the complexity of her poems have bred an intimacy and obsession with the poet and her work that is far more pronounced for Dickinson than for any other American poet. Her poetry is intimately connected with the social, cultural, and natural environment in which she grew up. Through a wide variety of experiences–-study of poetry and letters, lectures, discussions, tours, and inquiry-based workshops--participants will gain a broader and deeper understanding of the poet that will translate tangibly into curriculum projects for their classrooms. By critically considering her biography, her work, and artifacts from her world, participants will emerge from the Workshop as more discerning scholars and better-informed educators. The Emily Dickinson Dickinson Museum will offer two one-week sessions (July 10-14 and 24-28, 2017) for 36 teachers each.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers on cultural interactions and conflict in seventeenth-century New England.
The Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library proposes a 2017 Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshop for grades 3-12 teachers focused on the early colonial period in New England (1600-1700), with an emphasis on the role of geography and place. Participants will engage with maps and other primary sources, explore the colonial New England landscape and learn from scholars at a variety of historic sites, universities, and archival collections. These materials and places illuminate how English settlers and multifaceted Native communities viewed the New England region in different ways and with different perspectives.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two schoolteachers on the work of Henry Thoreau in connection with the historic and natural surroundings of Concord, Massachusetts, his home town.
The Concord Museum seeks $159,956 to conduct workshops for school teachers on the weeks of July 16-21 and July 23-28, 2017. Living and Writing Deliberately: The Concord Landscapes and Legacy of Henry Thoreau will immerse participants in the historic surroundings of Thoreau’s home town: natural sites that served him as both laboratory and sanctuary, places where he encountered folks whose lives would provide him with examples of both dignity and desperation, and locations of institutions that figured so prominently and provocatively in his essays. The primary focus will be how Thoreau’s ideas were shaped by his experiences, observations, reflections, and discoveries in this community a century and a half ago. Participants will visit the spots where those experiences took place, examine the process of writing employed by Thoreau, and explore the deliberate choices he made to live ethically and responsibly as part of both human society and the natural environment.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two schoolteachers on the construction and impact of the Grand Coulee Dam.
Eastern Washington University, in collaboration with the UNESCO Chair of Environmental History, the Colville Tribal Museum, the Kettle Falls Historical Center, and the Grand Coulee Dam Visitor's Center, is proposing two one-week workshops for teachers of grades 6-12. The workshops, "The Grand Coulee Dam: The Intersection of Modernity and Indigenous Cultures," offer a close examination of modernization and its impact upon the indigenous peoples in the first half of the 20th Century. This examination will be accomplished through a case study of the construction of Grand Coulee Dam and its subsequent effects upon eastern Washington tribes. Building upon the case study will be examples of modernization in the global context offering content in several disciplines. The project will be directed by Dr. Dorothy Zeisler-Vralsted, EWU Professor of Government, and Dr. David Pietz, UNESCO Chair, who are responsible for recruitment, selection, and workshop logistics and curriculum.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two schoolteachers on the life and work of Zora Neale Hurston and Eatonville, the community that formed her identity and fueled her imagination.
The workshops outlined in this proposal provide K-12 teachers with an interdisciplinary exploration of the life and work of Zora Neale Hurston and the community that formed her identity and fueled her imagination – Eatonville, Florida. Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1998, Eatonville is the oldest incorporated black town in the U.S. During the workshop, teachers will examine Hurston’s accomplishments within the context of the historical and cultural development of Eatonville and grapple with compelling questions about how this unique black enclave fueled her appreciation of folk culture, inspired her literary works, and formed her sometimes controversial views on race. Organized by the Florida Humanities Council in cooperation with the Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community and Rollins College, the workshops are scheduled to occur in July 2017.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two schoolteachers on the iconic nineteenth-century reform landscape of Rochester, New York.
This workshop brings together teachers, public historians, and scholarly experts for two week long programs focusing on Rochester NY’s iconic 19th century technological, economic and reform landmarks. Through field trips, scholarly presentations, and seminar-style discussions, NEH summer scholars examine the complexities of American Reform as expressed in landmarks such as the Erie Canal, Broad Street Aqueduct, Susan B. Anthony House, Seneca Falls Women’s Rights National Historical Park, Mount Hope Cemetery, and others. Participants visit these sites while studying the writings of the men and women who made this a center for reform culture in antebellum America. The workshop will illuminate broader themes: the economic and technological changes that shaped the mindset, worldviews, and everyday experiences of 19th century American reformers; the role religion played in expanding reform movements; and the impact of African Americans and women on pre- and post-Civil War reform culture.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two schoolteachers on the history and cultural memory of the Gullah people, as expressed through the arts.
The University of Connecticut, in collaboration with Penn Center, the Georgia Historical Society and other sites in the Coastal Lowlands, will present two one-week NEH Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshops in Savannah, GA on July 9-14 and July 16-21, 2017. The sessions will examine the artistic expressions of the Gullah, direct descendants of slaves who worked the rice plantations on the coastal islands off the shores of South Carolina and Georgia. Their history, stories, beliefs, and creative expressions are critical antecedents to African-American culture and the broader American mosaic, as we know it today. The workshop format will follow the African tradition, where the arts are studied as interrelated living experiences rather than as separate entities. Immersion experiences will take place at Penn Center, St. Helena Island, SC; Sapelo Island, McIntosh County, GA; the Georgia Historical Society and Pin Point Heritage Museum, Savannah, GA.
Wistariahurst Museum/The City of Holyoke, working with community partners and leading scholars, is seeking funding from the NEH for the implementation of a week-long Women Making Change: Activism and Progressivism at the Turn of the 20th Century Institute, a professional development program for educators. Women Making Change Institute will provide teachers with the content and tools to use primary source materials and local historical sites to bring more women’s history into their curricula. One week-long session will be presented to teachers from the Pioneer Valley and one will be presented to teachers from across the country. Women Making Change aims to use the landscape of Holyoke, a planned industrial city, to illuminate the intersection of gender and class at this point in American history and do so in a way that provides specific and diverse examples of women employing agency and intelligence to participate in the public realm and change the course of history.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers on the development of the skyscraper and its impact on the city of Chicago and on urbanization throughout the world.
Skyscrapers define the physical landscape and shape social life of major cities. High-rise construction is a symbol of innovation, industry, and infrastructure. Chicago’s history as a center for development of the skyscraper from the late 19th through mid-20th centuries positions the city as an ideal place to explore the ways in which tall buildings reflect social, cultural and political changes related to urbanization. In two six-day workshops conducted by the Chicago Architecture Foundation, educators will investigate the skyscraper as a physical and cultural construct. The tall building in Chicago will serve as a lens for studying invention and innovation; urbanization; industrialization; segregation; technology; labor; gender, particularly the introduction of women to the workplace; and civic identity. Studying the myriad forces that shaped Chicago will support educators’ investigations and teaching of how people’s decisions continue to shape an urban nation.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two schoolteachers on African-American entrepreneurship in the antebellum South, exemplified by Thomas Day and Elizabeth Keckly.
The Apprend Foundation, Inc. of Research Triangle Park, North Carolina proposes offering "Crafting Freedom 2017: African American Entrepreneurs in the Antebellum South," a Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshop, in collaboration with five North Carolina historic sites: the Burwell School in Hillsborough; the Union Tavern and Milton Presbyterian Church in Milton; Stagville Plantation in Durham; and the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "Crafting Freedom" engages K–12 educators in the theme of African-American agency by exploring the art and craft production, actions of resistance, and the literary works of a dozen little known yet historically significant Southern African Americans. Free black cabinetmaker Thomas Day (1801–ca. 1861) and formerly enslaved dressmaker–turned–Lincoln White House–insider Elizabeth Keckly (1817–1907) are the major black entrepreneurs featured in the workshop and at three of the five sites.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two schoolteachers on migration to and settlement of Utah.
Manifest Destiny Reconsidered: The Utah Experience aims to complicate the standing narrative of western expansion through intensive study of the migration to and settlement in Utah from 1847-1869. In doing so, it also will investigate how the emerging nation tried to define what it mean to be American, with particular focus on immigration, religion, race, gender, and class and an interest in addressing how such issues continue to shape the political and social debates of our nation. The workshops will be held at the Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah and at historic sites in the Salt Lake City area on June 18-23 and July 9-14, 2017.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two schoolteachers on the “border wars” in Kansas and Missouri during the Civil War era.
Crossroads of Conflict: Contested Visions of Freedom and the Missouri-Kansas Border War is a Landmarks of American History Workshop for Teachers that explores historic homes and public buildings, landscapes and archival collections in light of recent research to understand the clash of cultures and differing definitions of “freedom” that played out on the Missouri-Kansas border. Workshop participants will consider the forces and events that led to the abandonment of the understandings reached in the Missouri Compromise, the rejection of popular sovereignty in the Kansas Territory and the establishment of the shadow “Free State” government. They will examine the nature and intensity of the struggles between the Kansas Jayhawkers and Missouri Bushwhackers and the general mayhem these vicious disputes engendered. Workshop faculty includes some of the most respected scholars on the Civil War on the Western Border.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two schoolteachers on slavery and African- American life in colonial New England.
The Deerfield Teachers’ Center of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, a nationally recognized professional development provider, seeks $179,431 to fund two Landmarks Workshops for K-12 Teachers July 9 – 14, 2017 and July 23 – 28, 2017. "African Americans in the Making of Early New England" will take place in the Old Deerfield Village Historic Landmark District and will focus on the 23 African American Historic sites in the District and on Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford, MA, another National Historic Landmark. This workshop will bring together a wide range of primary resources — landscape, architecture, artifacts, documents, oral histories — along with secondary interpretations and lectures by specialists that will provide tools for K-12 educators to engage their students in learning about African Americans’ life experiences in early New England. Knowing this history is an important tool for building cross-racial and cross-cultural understanding in the classroom.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two K-12 schoolteachers on the history and musical cultures of New Orleans.
The “City of New Orleans: A Landmark of American Music and Civil Rights” teacher workshop project aims to implement two immersive 5-day experiences at Tulane University and several locations throughout New Orleans in Summer 2017. Each week-long workshop will introduce participants to the evolution of New Orleans music, from its earliest beginnings to present day. All along the way, the development of this music will be situated within historical and cultural contexts, and in relation to the evolution of human and civil rights. Drawing from cutting-edge scholars, luminous performers, and Co-Director Sonya Robinson’s inquiry-driven practice, these experiences promise to nourish, challenge, and inspire teachers, and in turn enrich their classrooms.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two schoolteachers on Native American and African-American educational experience in Kansas.
In summer 2017, the Spencer Museum of Art, located on the main campus of the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, will host two workshops on " Native American and African American Educational Experiences in Kansas, 1830 to 1960." Drawing on the resources and expertise of the Spencer Museum of Art and the University of Kansas; state and national historic sites; archives; and community members, artists, and scholars, each weeklong workshop will engage national K-12 teachers with the complex history of race relations in American education. Through a comparative study of Native American and African American educational history, workshop participants will gain insights into the distinct yet interwoven cultural narratives that comprise U.S. history.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers on the 1704 French and Indian Raid on Deerfield, Massachusetts.
The Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association and its Deerfield Teachers' Center, a nationally recognized professional development provider, seeks $179,553 to fund two Landmark Workshops for K-12 Teachers July 10 – 15, 2016 and July 24 – 29, 2016. "Living on the Edge of Empire: Alliance, Conflict and Captivity in Colonial New England" will take place in the beautiful Old Deerfield Village Historic Landmark District and surrounding historic sites. This Workshop will bring together a full range of resources-- landscape, architecture, artifacts, documents, oral histories—which, combined with secondary interpretations, illuminate competing perspectives on the colonial period. It will offer K-12 educators tools to engage students in topics related to the history of colonial America, including cultural interaction on the frontier, colonization, and the European imperial struggle for control of North America, which ultimately set the stage for the American Revolution.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers on Thomas Jefferson and community life at Monticello and the University of Virginia.
"All men are created equal"? Thomas Jefferson and Community Life at Monticello and UVA seeks to bring school teachers together with some of the foremost scholars on Thomas Jefferson in two workshops during the summer of 2016. Participants would explore not only the public spaces that Monticello and the University of Virginia represent, but the private ruminations of their founder as seen through textual, architectural, and archaeological evidence. Such a study, located in historic Charlottesville,Va., and conducted at Monticello and on grounds at the University, will afford participants an unusual opportunity for understanding the private life of Thomas Jefferson that will shed light on his public institutions, his most prominent writings, and the seemingly contradictory aspects of his public image and private life.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers on Shaker theology, design, and communal life as a window onto religious, social, and economic concerns of nineteenth-century America.
Siena College, partnering with the New York State Education Department's Office of Cultural Education, Shaker Heritage Society, Shaker Museum Mount Lebanon, and Hancock Shaker Village, proposes Religious Revivals, Utopian Societies, and The Shaker Experience in America. This NEH Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshop will examine the history of the Shakers as a model for understanding how the Second Great Awakening transformed the religious and social landscape of antebellum America. Through site visits, lectures, and close interaction with visiting scholars, NEH Summer scholars will gain a deeper understanding and appreciation for the interconnectivity of religion, culture, and economics in early American history. This workshop will take in Albany, New York, birthplace of American Shakerism, and includes visits to 3 landmark sites. Siena College hosted this workshop in 2013. In 2016, we will offer a broader curriculum that includes new themes and additional scholars.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers on Southern California’s technological and cultural transformation from the 1940s to the early 1980s through wartime and Cold War aerospace development.
Cold War Home Front is an NEH Landmarks of American Culture workshop series structured to help teachers learn deep historical content about the Cold War and engage that material thoughtfully through workshops by historians, discussion of important readings in history, visits to important historic sites and regional museums, and exploration of outstanding digital primary source materials.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers on the history and significance of Hoover Dam.
The subject of our Landmarks of American History and Culture workshop is the Hoover Dam. Proclaimed a savior of the American southwest and repeatedly hailed as a world wonder, Hoover Dam played a key role in both regional and national developments in early 20th century America including the expansion of federal water reclamation projects, advances in civil and hydro-engineering, development of public-private partnerships of the New Deal, and the rapid growth of cities and agriculture in the southwest. We propose Hoover Dam and the Shaping of the American West as a workshop for 6-12th grade educators to explore these ideas through discussions with leading scholars, daily site study, and historical research using primary documents at archives and museums in and around Boulder City and Las Vegas, Nevada.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers on the history and cultural memory of the Gullah people through the arts.
The University of Connecticut in collaboration with The Penn Cultural Center in St Helena, South Carolina, requests support from the National Endowment for the Humanities to repeat a Landmarks of American History Workshop, Gullah Voices: Traditions and Transformations. We propose to offer two, one-week workshops for 80 (40 in each workshop) middle and secondary school teachers from across the country to explore the history and cultural memory of the Gullah people through the arts. Gullah Voices will take place July 10-15 and July 17-22, 2016 in Savannah, Georgia, a major urban center of Gullah culture, and will include excursions to Landmark sites throughout the Lowcountry, a geographic and cultural region located along the South Carolina and Georgia coasts that includes the Sea Islands.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers on the transcontinental railroad and its impact on nineteenth-century America.
The History Project at University of California, Davis, in partnership with California State Parks (including the California State Railroad Museum, Old Sacramento State Historic Park and the Leland Stanford Mansion State Historic Park), the Historic Old Sacramento Foundation, Crocker Art Museum, and Stanford University seeks $180,000 to fund two Landmarks of American History workshops for teachers in 2016. The Transcontinental Railroad: Transforming California and the Nation will be held at historic sites in Sacramento on July 10 through 15 and July 24 through 29, 2016, with day trips to Donner Pass and to the San Francisco Bay Area with visits to Stanford University and San Francisco Maritime National Park. The goal of the workshop is to assist K-12 educators in acquiring new content knowledge, experiences that will translate to classroom instruction, resources for lesson planning, and tools for using the transcontinental railroad as a lens for examining the Gilded Age.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers to study Pueblo history and culture through the archaeology of Mesa Verde.
Mesa Verde National Park and the Construction of Pueblo Indian History is two one-week residence-based workshops, each for 36 school teachers. The workshops focus on three fundamental questions that touch the lives of Americans today: 1) Who creates America’s history and culture? 2) How do we come to know and appreciate the time depth, people, and activities that comprise the past and inform the present? 3) How did people in the past use their knowledge and creativity to cope with population growth in an ever-changing environment (an interactive cycle known as the Neolithic Demographic Transition, or Neolithic Revolution)? The workshop illustrates these concepts using two historic landmarks: Mesa Verde National Park and the Indian Camp Ranch Archaeological District—both among the world’s greatest archaeological treasures and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers on the textile industry in Lowell, Massachusetts, as a case study of early nineteenth-century industrialization.
The Tsongas Industrial History Center, a partnership of UMass Lowell's Graduate School of Education and Lowell National Historical Park, proposes to engage teachers in examining the textile industry as a case study of early 19th-century industrialization. We use the resources of the Park and other cultural/historical sites to address changes in work, economics, society, culture, and the environment between 1820 and 1860. An online follow-up discussion with readings examines culture and immigration, past and present. Lowell, the first planned industrial city in the U.S., formed the template for later industrial cities and provides an ideal setting for historical inquiry. Teachers investigate history where it happened and learn how to teach with primary sources, artifacts, and historic sites in their own communities. The Workshop combines lectures, discussion, hands-on and field investigations, dramatic presentations, and close examination of primary, secondary, and literary sources.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two teachers on the role of Fort Ticonderoga in the American Revolution.
Fort Ticonderoga, often called the "Key to a Continent" and the "Gibraltar of the North," played a vital role in the strategies of both the British and Continental armies during the first three years of the American Revolution. The importance of the Northern Theater from 1775 to 1777 is often overshadowed by events in Boston (1775-76), New York (1776), and eastern Pennsylvania (1776-77). We invite educators to come explore the amazing history behind these first years of the Revolution. In addition to studying the important role Fort Ticonderoga, Lake Champlain, and the northern frontier played during the war, participants will explore the influence of the French & Indian War, the people involved on both sides of the Revolution, the sometimes-overlooked role Benedict Arnold played in those early years, the immediate and long-term impact of the Saratoga Campaign, and the lasting legacies of the northern campaigns on the Revolution.
Two one-week Landmarks workshops for seventy-two school teachers on the social, economic, and cultural impact of World War II in the San Francisco Bay Area.
This proposal is for two intensive week-long workshops for humanities teachers, focusing on the themes of movement, mobilization, and militarization in the San Francisco Bay Area during World War II. It will be hosted by the University of California, Berkeley History-Social Science Project, in partnership with UC Berkeley’s History Department, Regional Oral History Office, and Bancroft Library, as well as the National Park Service and Presidio Trust of San Francisco. The workshops will be held at historic sites of national importance throughout the Bay Area. Participating educators will study the workshop themes through physical landmarks, oral histories, film, fiction, academic texts and scholar lectures. These workshops will increase teacher content knowledge of the impact of World War II on the economy, demography, culture, and social relations of the Bay Area as a means for understanding the trends of the effects of World War II and the Home Front throughout the United States.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers on graffiti as a window onto soldiers’ perspectives during the Civil War.
This workshop invites teachers to explore the Civil War through the lives of individual Civil War soldiers who left their mark in three “graffiti houses” in Northern Virgina-Historic Blenheim, Ben Lomond and the Graffiti House at Brandy Station. Workshop participants will select an item of graffiti from these locations and piece together the story of the individual who created it. They will research their soldier’s service and postwar life in National Archives, and visit the Gettysburg National Military Park to examine the monuments and markers that commemorate the common soldier. Upon completing the workshop, teachers will have knowledge of how to use the history of ordinary individuals to personalize the social and cultural history of the Civil War, and make it powerful to students. Telling their soldier's story in an online exhibit will also provide the opportunity to learn how to identify and use the new digital resources and tools that are transforming how historians work.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers to explore the histories and cultures of Asian immigrants in the Pacific Northwest and their significance to the nation.
The Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience will conduct two week-long workshops in summer 2016 to examine the experience of early Native Hawaiian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, and Asian Indian American immigrants, and their vast labor and sociocultural contributions to the developing and transforming Pacific Northwest, American West and the United States overall. Led by national scholars of Asian American history and immigration, workshop participants will immerse in unknown yet highly remarkable historic sites and living cultural communities supplemented with archival documents, academic readings, lectures and discussions.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers on the history and culture of the Mississippi Delta, with music as a focus.
The Most Southern Place on Earth: Music, History, and Culture of the Mississippi Delta was presented with NEH support in June and July of 2009, 2010, 2012 and 2013, and 2014. The Most Southern Place on Earth addresses all four of the goals of the Landmarks program. It informs participants of the important role that the Mississippi Delta has played in American history, a role that is very often ignored or overlooked. Since the Delta is a place of “mean poverty and garish opulence” (according to Will Campbell), intellectual exploration of its heritage requires building a community of civility. Our approach is highly experiential and tells heritage stories at the places where they happened.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers on the history and significance of the Japanese American incarceration experience during World War II.
The Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) seeks $165,831 through the NEH Landmarks of American History and Culture grant program to fund two five-day workshops for school teachers that will explore the historical significance and enduring legacy of the Japanese American incarceration experience during World War II. These workshops, titled Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis: The Japanese American Incarceration, will be held in the historic Little Tokyo neighborhood of Los Angeles on July 24-29 and August 7-12, 2016, with day trips to Santa Anita Park and Manzanar National Historic Site.
Two one-week Landmarks workshops for seventy-two school teachers on the history and legacy of the civil rights movement in Alabama.
"Stony the Road" is a comprehensive, interactive teacher workshop that includes lectures by renowned scholars, an opportunity to enter into discourse with movement participants, development of instructional units, and travel to key sites of memory dedicated to the Modern Civil Rights Movement. Each week of Stony the Road We Trod (Stony), teachers will participate in a comprehensive study of the Modern Civil Rights Movement and the role that Alabama played in thrusting the struggle for civil rights to the forefront of every media outlet in the world. Teachers, by participating in interactive lectures and discourse with noted scholars and historians, will come to understand the true impact of the movement and how the events in Alabama were central to the movement. The two week-long sessions will take run June 26-July 2 and July 10-16, 2016.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers on temperance and immigration in the Progressive Era.
The Ohio History Connection requests $179,405.98 in support of a teacher professional development workshop entitled--Demon Times: Temperance, Immigration, and Progressivism in an American City. The goal of the workshop is to consider the roles of Westerville, Ohio and Columbus, Ohio as landmark cities central to the themes of Temperance, immigration, and the Progressive movement in American history and culture. The workshops have been designed as an immersive experience, allowing 72 Summer Scholars to walk, live, and eat in the landmark establishments of the temperance movement and the immigrant experience in late 19th and early 20th century America.
Two one-week workshops for school teachers on the life and times of Benjamin Franklin.
La Salle University seeks NEH funding to host two one-week educators' workshops in Philadelphia during the summer of 2016 to explore Benjamin Franklin's career and its influence on the American people. Partnering with Independence National Historical Park, numerous historic sites throughout the Greater Philadelphia Region, and other leading academic organizations, the workshops will give seventy-two teachers access to cutting-edge humanities scholarship as well as allowing them to visit and study unique historic places intimately associated with Benjamin Franklin and his times.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers using the Adirondacks to explore the interconnections of urban and wilderness environments in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America.
Forever Wild: The Adirondacks in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era is a collaborative effort providing an unparalleled opportunity for teachers to investigate the late 19th century and early 20th century period from the unique perspective of the wilderness. Based at Camp Huntington, the first Adirondack Great Camp built in the 1870s, Forever Wild engages participants in a dialogue focused on the workshop's central question: what did wilderness mean to Americans during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era? The many answers provide teachers with the multidimensional view of the period that will enrich their students' understanding of this decisive era. The project's goal is to enable teachers to develop a deeper understanding of the interconnection between the histories of the urban and the wild while furthering teachers' instructional skills.
Two one-week workshops for K-12 teachers on the memorialization of the Civil War in Richmond, Virginia.
This workshop will bring groups of teachers to Richmond, Virginia to study the legacy of the Civil War as it circulates through collective memories. Through lectures, site visits, exploring primary source materials, analyzing artworks, and discussion, the teachers will learn about collective memories and how they influence ways we understand history. Because of its history as the capital of the Confederacy, Richmond has particularly strong cultural resources related to the Civil War including multiple sites of the American Civil War Museum, the Virginia Historical Society, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and nearby, the Appomattox Court House. University scholars as well as educators and curators from the different sites will engage the teachers in understanding different collective memories, how they change over time, how they circulate today, and how they are present in curriculum materials. Teachers will build a multimedia Google map resource to document their learning.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers on the iconic nineteenth-century reform landscape of Rochester, New York.
This workshop will bring together school teachers, public historians, and scholarly experts for study of Rochester's iconic 19th century reform landscape. Through field trips, lectures and discussions, participants will examine Rochester's central role in American history and the legacy it has left on public memory, moments and visual iconography. Teachers will study the words and ideas of celebrated Rochester reformers (including Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, and Charles Finney) while visiting their homes, activist headquarters, business offices and churches. The workshop will explore several broad themes: the economic, social and physical landscape shaping 19th century American reform; the connections between reformer's private and public lives; the role that religion played in expanding reform movements; and the impact of women and African Americans on reform culture both before and after the Civil War.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two teachers on the role of the Pacific in American history.
The Maritime Museum of San Diego (MMSD) offers a workshop on historical developments in the Pacific, and on the role of science, technology, geography, oceanography, and climate across civilizations and cultures. Locating San Diego as the first city of European settlement on the West Coast, the program underscores the importance of this region in early American history. Lectures and discussion explore 1) European voyages and contacts between Europeans and native peoples, and consider how period maps revealed early understandings of geography, diverse cultures, and the science of navigation; 2) evidence of prehistoric Native American seafaring; 3) the founding of California as an outpost of New Spain; and 4) Spanish mission life and how Americans entered the Pacific. The last day of the workshop takes place aboard the state's official tall ship, Californian, with demonstrations of early explorers' arts and tools for navigation, cartography, and music. Led by project director Raymond Ashley (MMSD), visiting lecturers include Steve Colston (history, San Diego State University), Jim Cassidy (U.S. Navy), David Ringrose (history, University of California, San Diego), Iris Engstrand (University of San Diego), and Kevin Sheehan and Bruce Linder (both MMSD), among others. Key landmark sites to be studied include the Cabrillo National Monument, Old Town San Diego State Historic Park, and the San Diego Mission de Alcala. In addition to the museum's collection of historic ships, primary sources also include maps, archaeological evidence collected from recent excavations in the California Channel Islands, and materials recovered from an actual galleon, as well as European and native accounts of exploration and first encounters. A local Kumeyaay teacher engages participants in a hands-on cultural activity centered on the question, Who are the Kumeyaay? Additional topics include the dynamic and wealthy economies of sixteenth-century China and India, as well as the links between American silver and the financing of Europe's battles beyond 1650. Participants also examine America's ascendance to Pacific power through maritime geo-strategic influences and how a national policy that set the Pacific as its highest strategic priority exerted far more influence than is commonly recognized.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers on the history and cultural memory of the Gullah people of Georgia and South Carolina, explored through the arts.
This workshop introduces teachers to the history and rich artistic heritage of the Gullah people, who are direct descendants of slaves who lived on plantations and in farming and fishing communities along the South Carolina and Georgia Sea Islands and coastal lowlands. Their strong community life and geographical isolation enabled the Gullah people to preserve more of the African heritage than other African-American groups in the United States. As a result, the history, stories, beliefs, and creative expressions of the Gullah are critical antecedents to African-American culture and the broader American mosaic, as we know it today. The workshop is based in Savannah, Georgia, to give access to sites of Gullah culture; it incorporates a variety of source types: live performances, sound recordings, written documents, material sites, artifacts, moving and still images, and life-story materials. Each day is organized around cultural themes: Sounds and Traditions: The Sacred World of Black Slaves (Monday); Sounds in Place and Time: The Plantation and the Praise House (Tuesday); Images and Iconography (Wednesday); Stories and Artifacts (Thursday); and Cultural Memories in History: Recollections (Friday). The landmark sites to be visited include Historic Savannah and the Pin Point Heritage Museum; The Georgia Historical Society, a significant archive for primary sources on the Gullah; The Penn Center, a National Historic Landmark on St. Helena Island; and Sapelo Island, a state-protected island located in McIntosh County, Georgia. Directed by Robert Stephens and Mary Ellen Junda (musicologists, University of Connecticut), the workshop features guest presenters Peter Wood (historian, Duke University), Erskine Clarke (historian, Columbia Theological Seminary), Emory Shaw Campbell and Victoria Smalls (historians, Penn Center), Ron Daise (cultural historian, Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Commission), Cornelia Bailey (cultural historian and Gullah native), Leroy Campbell (visual artist), and Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters (musicians). Guest lectures explore a wide variety of topics including the story of the African-American religious experiences, the connection between Africa and America, and secular music styles. Participants also attend live performances, workshop demonstrations, and watch the video documentary, The Language You Cry In. Three books have been selected for pre-workshop reading: Lawrence W. Levine's Black Culture and Black Consciousness; Cornelia Bailey's God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man; and Wilbur Cross's Gullah Culture in America. Participants are organized into five-member teams to facilitate interaction and collaboration.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers using New York City landmarks to illuminate major themes in local and national history from 1880 to 1929.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two teachers to explore events surrounding the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, the political aftermath of the national tragedy, and the enduring legacy of our sixteenth president.
The workshop takes place at the restored Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC, on the 150th anniversary of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Geographer Kenneth Foote (University of Connecticut) leads a Sunday evening discussion about the history of Ford's Theatre, the assassination on the night of April 14, 1865, and national memory of the event. On Monday, historians Kenneth Winkle (University of Nebraska, Lincoln) and Terry Alford (Northern Virginia Community College) describe the city during the war years, the city's celebration of the South's surrender, and the extent of the conspiracy to kill Lincoln. Participants visit the Ford's Theatre museum, then cross the street to visit Petersen House, where the dying Lincoln was carried. They also visit the adjacent Center for Education and Leadership, which contains exhibits on Lincoln's funeral and artifacts on the hunt for, and trial of, the assassins. On Tuesday, participants retrace the first portion of Booth's escape route through southern Maryland, and visit conspirator Mary Surratt's tavern in Surrattsville (now Clinton), Maryland. Back at Ford's Theatre in the early afternoon, they view and discuss the film The Conspirator, told from the viewpoint of Mrs. Surratt. On Wednesday, historian Martha Hodes (New York University) discusses emotional and personal responses to the assassination across America. Following this, participants reflect on the Civil War's enormous death toll with visits to Arlington National Cemetery, the former site of the Mary Custis Lee plantation, which was home to General Robert E. Lee. On Thursday, historian Kate Masur (Northwestern University) leads a session on African-American politics in the capital city during Reconstruction, after which participants visit Cedar Hill, former home of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, as well as the African-American Civil War Memorial and Museum in the district. In the evening, participants view Steven Spielberg's film Lincoln and discuss its portrayal of the last months of Lincoln's presidency. Friday's activities are organized around the theme "Lincoln's Legacy in Reconstruction," with a visit to the Lincoln Memorial, site of Marian Anderson's 1939 Easter Sunday concert and the 1963 March on Washington. Historian Edward T. Linenthal (Indiana University) leads a wrap-up discussion on Saturday morning, situating the lessons learned during the week in the broader context of U.S. history. Workshop readings include Brian Anderson, Ford's Theatre; Jay Winik, April 1865: The Month That Saved America; Terry Alford, Fortune's Fool: The Biography of John Wilkes Booth; Martha Hodes, Mourning Lincoln; Kate Masur, An Example for All the Land: Emancipation and the Struggle Over Equality in Washington, D.C.; Kenneth Winkle, Lincoln's Citadel: The Civil War in Washington, D. C.; and articles by David Blight, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Thavolia Glymph, James McPherson, Timothy Good, and Gary Zola.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers on Virginia's "Massive Resistance" to the 1954 Supreme Court ruling Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.
This workshop focuses on the leading role Virginia played in resisting the 1954 decision of the United States Supreme Court that state laws designating separate public schools for black and white students are unconstitutional. In the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ruling, Virginia launched a "Massive Resistance" using numerous approaches to circumvent Brown, ranging from the creation of state-funded private "segregation academies" to shutting down public schools entirely, as in Prince Edward County. The workshop builds on the Desegregation of Virginia Education (DOVE) project, a state-wide collaboration of scholars and archivists endeavoring to discover and preserve documentation of Virginia communities' efforts to resist or implement school desegregation. The workshop is codirected by education specialist Yonghee Suh of Old Dominion University (ODU), where the DOVE project is housed, and historian Brian Daugherity of Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), which serves as the host campus. Daugherity's book, With All Deliberate Speed, serves as a basic text for the workshop, along with selections from Elusive Equality: Desegregation and Resegregation in Norfolk's Public Schools, coauthored by visiting scholar Charles Ford, and from Black Teachers on Teaching (Michele Foster). Peter Wallenstein, professor of history at Virginia Polytechnic University, opens the workshop with an overview of the history of Virginia school segregation up through the Civil Rights Movement. Based in Richmond, the participants work with historians and archivists in the exploration of primary sources (recordings, papers, memoirs, court briefs) and secondary scholarship at sites including Virginia State University, where key documents on African-American teacher training are held; VCU's Voice of Freedom collection of oral and documentary resources on African-American education leaders; Moton School and Moton Museum, with exhibits of the strike, lawsuit, and lockout to prevent integration in Prince Edward County; two Kent County schools at the center of Green v. New Kent County (a Supreme Court case that set the stage for busing public school students across boundaries to achieve racial balance), and the Capitol Building and Virginia Civil Rights memorial in Richmond, among others.
This workshop explores the impact of the transcontinental railroad on the politics, society, economy, and environment of California and the nation. Daily topics include technology and labor, geography and the environment, the social and economic impact of the railroad, and the West in the American imagination. Based in Sacramento, the western terminus of the railroad, the project includes visits to the California State Railroad Museum, Old Sacramento State Historic Park, the Sacramento History Museum, the Crocker Art Museum, and the mansion of railroad baron Leland Stanford. Farther afield, participants take day trips to the Bay Area, where they learn from prominent scholars at Stanford University and tour San Francisco's Old Mint, and to Donner Pass, to see for themselves the difficult terrain faced by railroad workers. In addition to co-directors Ari Kelman and Eric Rauchway of University of California, Davis, the faculty includes historians Richard White and Gordon Chang (both of Stanford University), Richard J. Orsi (California State University, East Bay), and museum curators and staff. Chang discusses his current research on Chinese railroad workers and how they shaped the social as well as physical landscape of the West; White discusses selected chapters from his prize-winning book Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America. Other readings are drawn from Amy Richter's Home on the Rails: Women, the Railroad, and the Rise of Public Domesticity; Alexander Saxton's The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California; Wolfgang Schivelbusch's The Railway Journey: The Industrialization and Perception of Time and Space in the 19th Century; Andrew C. Isenberg's The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750-1920; and The West As America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820-1920, edited by William Truettner. During the workshop, participants develop a lesson or unit plan using materials from the workshop, which receive peer feedback and undergo revision prior to posting on the project's website.
For seventy-two teachers, two one-week workshops focusing on the economic development of the Connecticut River Valley over two centuries.
Established by George Washington in 1777, the Federal Armory at Springfield, Massachusetts, became an influential force for technological innovation. In the early 1800s the Armory created fully interchangeable weapons using methods that launched the U.S. precision metals industry as well as mass production in a host of industries in the Connecticut River Valley, including cutlery, sewing machines, bicycles, textiles, shoes, furniture, and paper. Directed by educator Richard Cairn, this workshop explores the leading role the Armory played in the Industrial Revolution and related social, political, and cultural transformations. In addition to the government-funded and -directed Armory, the region was also home to small-scale entrepreneurship (an economic development common to much of America), larger investor-designed transportation systems and industries, and even an abolitionist utopian community formed around producing silk as an alternative to cotton that depended on slave labor. In examining these different economic engines, teachers consider key factors such as capitalization, management systems, labor sources and labor rights, markets, transportation and systems to promote technological innovation. Participants work with collections in the Museum of Springfield History and Smith Gallery of Fine Arts, and they spend a day in Holyoke to explore aspects of what was one of the first planned industrial communities in the U.S., accompanied by Robert Forrant (University of Massachusetts, Lowell) to discuss city design and to interpret the landscape of canals and repurposed mill buildings. At Wisteriahurst in Holyoke, the teachers see the home and collections of silk manufacturer William Skinner, and contrast this with the lives of largely immigrant servants and workers. A trip to Florence focuses on the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, organized around reform movements to counter mainstream social, political, and economic structures. The Springfield Armory is visited twice: on Monday, to consider the development of the American system of manufacturing, and then on Thursday, in relation to discussions of the environmental impact of industrialism and the role of Springfield weaponry in numerous wars, including World Wars I and II. In addition to resources found on the Emerging America website, primary materials such as Longfellow's poem "The Arsenal at Springfield" and excerpts from Bellamy's Looking Backward, readings include a wide range of articles and book chapters, such as "The Wilderness Should Turn a Mart" (William Cronon), "The Literary Landscape: A Delightful Excursion" (Jill Hodnicki), "The River Gods in the Making" (Kevin Sweeney), "Arcadian Values: The Connecticut Valley in Art" (Martha Hoppins), "The American System of Manufacture in the Antebellum Period" (David Hounshell), and selections from A Place Called Paradise: Culture and Community in Northampton, Massachusetts, 1654-2004 (Kerry Buckley, ed.) and Working People of Holyoke: Class and Ethnicity in a Massachusetts Mill Town, 1850-1960 (William Hartford). The faculty includes several scholars from the history department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst: Richard Chu, David Glassberg, John Higginson, Bruce Laurie, Alice Nash, and Leonard Richards.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers that connect the study of mines and mining in Montana to broad patterns of U.S. history.
This workshop addresses the contributions of western mining to the social and economic history of the United States through study of the different types of mining in four Montana towns. Lectures and discussions address such topics as the technological processes of mining; capital and labor in the mining industry; the architecture and commercial life of Bannack, Virginia City, Helena, and Butte; African-American, Jewish, and Chinese communities; and relations with Native Americans in the region. Project co-directors Kirby Lambert (Montana Historical Society [MHS]) and Paula Petrik (history, George Mason University) are joined by Robert Swartout (history, Carroll College), Ken Egan (literature, Humanities Montana), Fredric Quivik (industrial heritage and archaeology, Michigan Technological University), Nicholas Vrooman (Native American history, University of Montana), Andrea Stierle (biochemistry, Montana State University [MSU]), Mary Murphy (history, MSU), educator and Crow tribe member Shayne Doyle (Native American studies, MSU), independent filmmaker Pamela Roberts, and other local experts. Readings include selections from Montana: A History of Two Centuries (Michael Malone, et al.) and Montana: Stories of the Land (Krys Holmes), as well as scholarly chapters and articles, several by workshop faculty Petrik, Murphy, and Vrooman. The participants also use primary sources from MHS, including documents, maps, and photographs, as they develop teaching units.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers using the Adirondacks to understand the meaning and influence of wilderness environments in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America.
This workshop, directed by historians Kevin Sheets and Randi Storch (State University of New York College of Cortland [SUNY Cortland]), explores the social, cultural, political, and economic relevance of the Adirondack wilderness to the history of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, which is taught with an urban focus. Participants learn on-site at three Adirondack Great Camps (Camp Huntington, which now belongs to SUNY Cortland, and those of the Vanderbilts and J.P. Morgan) and two museums (Adirondack Museum and 1890 House Museum), as well as on contrasting walking tours in urban Cortland and on Adirondack camp trails. Monday's focus on "Innovation, Industrialization and Domestic Life of the Gilded Age" takes Cortland as a case study for understanding life in a nineteenth-century manufacturing town. Participants work with collections at the 1890 House Museum, modeling historians' process of inquiry and interpretation. Discussing novels (by Theodore Dreiser and, more recently, by Jennifer Donnelly) that fictionalize the 1906 murder of Cortland factory worker Grace Brown, they explore the interpretation of historical events through literature. The focus on Tuesday is the cultural and aesthetic ideal of the wilderness and how Americans of the era defined "wilderness" and "nature" in contrast with the urban experience. Primary source texts and period photographs in the archive and library at Camp Huntington help illuminate the role of "wilderness" in Gilded Age ideas of masculinity, class, and nation building. Wednesday's theme, "From Enchanted Forest to Lumber Mill," focuses on the economic interdependence of city and wilderness. Adirondack Museum curators guide participants through exhibits on the region's industries and help them engage with the museum's collections and historic structures, ranging from a nineteenth-century one-room log cabin hotel to a luxurious early-twentieth-century Pullman railcar. Thursday's topic turns to "Domesticating the Wild," with study of the Great Camps that industrialists built as "civilized" retreats in the wilderness for their leisure pursuits. On Friday, "wilderness" is considered as a focus of political conflict, most notably in the 1894 debate over protecting the Adirondack forest preserve as "forever wild" in the revised state constitution. Historian Rebecca Edwards (Vassar College) situates these contentions among industrialists, reformers, and naturalists in their Progressive-Era political context. Workshop readings include excerpts from primary sources of the era, as well as such secondary works as William Cronon's essay "The Trouble with Wilderness," and selections from book-length studies by Philip Terrie, Forever Wild: A Cultural History of Wilderness in the Adirondacks, and Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two teachers on Independence Hall in Philadelphia as a civic gathering place and repository of collective memory.
Originally built as the Pennsylvania State House in 1732, Independence Hall in Philadelphia served for more than four decades as the seat of Pennsylvania's provincial government before gaining its place on the national and world stage as the setting for the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The surrounding Independence Square (named as such in 1824) later assumed a role as a place for the advancement of social causes. Frederick Douglass spoke against slavery in Independence Square in 1844; Susan B. Anthony spoke there in defense of women's rights in 1876. During the last century, it emerged as a location for ethnic parades, holiday celebrations, and political demonstrations--a role it continues to fill as part of Independence National Historic Park. The new workshop gathers this long and storied history together around a guiding question, "What is the role of an iconic landmark in a culture?" Historian Gary Nash (University of California, Los Angeles) launches the workshop with discussion of his Landmarks of the American Revolution, part of the Oxford University Press series, Guide to Historic Places, and a review of Pauline Maier's classic work, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence, a pre-workshop assigned reading. On day two at Independence Hall, project co-director and historian Charlene Mires (Rutgers University, Camden) develops the theme, "The Foundation of an Icon." On day three, participants tour the Liberty Bell site and the site of the President's House, with lectures by historians Randall Miller (Saint Joseph's University) and Emma Lapsansky-Werner (Haverford College) on "African Americans in the City of Independence" and "Abolition and the Liberty Bell," respectively. On the fourth day, participants visit the National Archives and Records Administration, with lectures by Holly Holst (National Park Service) and Dr. Mires on "Remember the Women" and "Expressing and Expanding National Identity." On day five, participants visit the Philadelphia History Museum and hear a lecture by historian Tom Sugrue (University of Pennsylvania) on "Protest in Place." On the workshop's final day, participants tour the National Constitution Center (NCC), guided by Dr. Mires and NCC educator Kathleen Maher, who discuss the town hall as a stage for national discourse. Participants study primary documents, art, and artifacts: Lafayette memorabilia; nineteenth-century souvenir canes; the Hucksters' Petition to the Select and Common Councils of the City of Philadelphia, 1805; Susan B. Anthony's Declaration of Rights of the Women, 1876; and others. In addition to the Maier text, scholarly works include Eric Foner's The Story of American Freedom; Gary Nash's Forging Freedom: the Formation of Philadelphia's Black Community; and Charlene Mires's Independence Hall in American Memory.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers to explore abolitionism and the Underground Railroad in the port city of New Bedford, Massachusetts.
This program examines New Bedford, Massachusetts, as a lens through which to view the great challenges facing nineteenth-century America. Though New Bedford is best known as American's preeminent whaling port, during this period it also became one of the nation's most cosmopolitan cities. While its maritime trade drew diverse populations of immigrants, it also transported to freedom fugitive African Americans in ship cargo holds. With its significant Quaker population, New Bedford emerged as a hub of both reform society and abolitionist activity. As Kathryn Grover captures in her book The Fugitive's Gibraltar: Escaping Slaves and Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts, New Bedford was "not so much a stop along the Underground Railroad, but rather a terminus--a community where ex-slaves knew they could settle and prosper." Project director Timothy Walker (University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth [UMD]), a maritime and slave trade historian, has assembled a group of faculty, including UMD historians Len Travers and Lee Blake, Jeffrey Bolster (University of New Hampshire), John Stauffer and Mary Malloy (Harvard University), independent scholars Kathryn Grover and David Cecelski, Laurie Robertson-Lorant (Bridgewater State University), Kate Clifford Larson (Simmons College), Delores Walters (University of Rhode Island), and local poet laureate Everett Hoagland. Presentation topics include "An Overview of New Bedford Waterfront Trades"; "Black Seamen in the Atlantic"; "New Bedford's African-American Community"; "Frederick Douglass, New Bedford and the Underground Railroad"; "History of the Underground Railroad in Poetry and Oral Tradition"; and "Gendered Resistance: Black Women and Resistance to Enslavement," among others. Each day, experts connect lectures and discussions with close studies of original documents, objects, and architecture. Teachers examine rare maritime guides, captains' logs, and mariners' scrimshaw sculpture. Primary readings include census data, fugitive slave narratives, and the speeches and letters of Frederick Douglass; secondary readings include works by several of the visiting scholars, such as Jeffrey Bolster's Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers on Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, and the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War on April 19, 1775.
This workshop focuses on the Minuteman National Historical Park, The Old Manse, Paul Revere House, Freedom Trail in Boston, and sites in Concord itself to explore the question, Why did Lexington and Concord become focal points at the crossroads for both colonial and British activities? The central theme of crossroads, with its physical and symbolic implications, serves to illuminate the following topics: New England life and society on the eve of the Revolution; the developing conflict between Britain and its colonies; the battles themselves; the impact of the events on ordinary farmers, women, and African Americans; the local environment and landscape in relation to the history of the time; and the legacies of the Revolution, particularly in the writings of nineteenth-century Concord authors. On Monday, Robert Gross, whose work The Minutemen and Their World won the Bancroft Prize, leads participants in an examination of life on the eve of the Revolution and discusses what issues, decisions, and actions brought colonists and British to the point of confrontation. On Tuesday, Benjamin Carp draws on his extensive research and teaching on Boston in the period of the Revolution to help participants investigate ways in which the towns around Boston were working together on a regional and provincial basis in 1774 and 1775. On Wednesday, Jim Hollister and Leslie Obleschuk lead participants on a tour of the Battle Road where Paul Revere was captured by British scouts; participants also view the multimedia production "Road to Revolution" in the Park theater. On Thursday, Mary Fuhrer, Joanne Myers, and Brian Donahue introduce participants to documentary sources useful for their research projects on the role of ordinary townspeople in this extraordinary time. The last day of the program is devoted to the events following April 19, 1775, and how the world of the colonists had changed. In conclusion, Robert Gross leads a discussion on the revolutionary legacy which brought an end to the intellectual and cultural dependence on the Old World. The project, co-directed by Kathleen Barker and Jayne Gordon (Massachusetts Historical Society), includes the aforementioned guest scholars Robert Gross (history, University of Connecticut), Brian Donahue (environmental studies, Brandeis University), Benjamin Carp (history, Tufts University), William Fowler (history, Northeastern University), and independent scholars Mary Fuhrer and Joanne Meyers. Participants read primary sources at the Massachusetts Historical Society, as well as secondary literature including The Minutemen and Their World by Robert Gross, Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party by Benjamin Carp, Paul Revere's Ride by David H. Fischer, Revolutionary Mothers by Carol Berkin, "Concord Hymn" by Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Slavery in Massachusetts" by Henry David Thoreau, Moses from an Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and "Woman's Part in the Concord Celebration" by Louisa May Alcott.
This workshop focuses on the history and culture of the Mississippi Delta, described by historian James Cobb as "the most Southern place on earth." Project director Luther Brown leads the first day's seminar on Delta history and the Mississippi River, to include the documentaries LaLee's Kin: The Legacy of Cotton and Fatal Flood, alongside a visit to the site of the levee break in the Great Flood of 1927. During day two, historian Charles Reagan Wilson (University of Mississippi) explores the area's ethnic and religious diversity, including its early Chinese, Russian Jewish, Lebanese, and Italian communities. With music scholar David Evans (University of Memphis) serving as lead scholar, the third day unfolds around the theme, "The Blues: American Roots Music and the Culture That Produced It." Participants visit Dockery Farms, the plantation known as the birthplace of the Blues, and consider how life in the Delta influenced the music of early Blues musicians like Charley Patton and Robert Johnson. On day four, Delta State faculty member Henry Outlaw presents the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi, with the Emmett Till story as a case study in "oppression, revolution, and reconciliation." Providing a first-hand account of this era and Civil Rights movement work, former Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee member Charles McLaurin also speaks with the group. Participants travel on day five to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, the site of Martin Luther King's assassination; they also visit other historical landmarks, cultural institutions, and music-related sites. On day six, geographer John Strait (Sam Houston State University) lectures on the migration of Delta residents to the cities of the North. Readings include, among other works: James Cobb, The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity; John M. Barry, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927; and Chris Crowe, Getting Away With Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case.
For seventy-two teachers, two one-week workshops using the Pan-American Exposition of 1901, held in Buffalo, New York, to explore Gilded Age themes and events.
This workshop focuses on Lowell, Massachusetts, as a significant case study of American industrialization between 1820 and 1860. Lowell tells the story of how Yankee ingenuity meets early industrial capitalism in a traditional agricultural society and develops into a full-fledged market-based economy. A fundamental transformation of American life occurred as the result of the mobilization of women and immigrants into the work force and accompanying changes in ethnic and cultural diversity, class relations, and social mobility; new economic models and volatile markets; and the rise of labor unions and progressive movements. The workshop is organized around a set of key topics: 1) Lowell's overall significance as an industrial showplace, 2) the transformation of New England's economic and social order, 3) changes in the experience of work, 4) worker protest and organization, 5) the struggle of Lowell's community to come to terms with slavery, 6) transformation of nature as a result of industrialization, and 7) the intellectual, artistic, and literary efforts to define an "American" culture. Sheila Kirschbaum, the workshop director, assembles a group of historians with particular expertise on Lowell, including Merritt Roe Smith (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Patrick Malone (Brown University), and Thomas Kelleher (Old Sturbridge Village), and University of Massachusetts, Lowell, faculty Robert Forrant, Bridget Marshall, Jennifer Cadero-Gillette, and Gregory Fitzsimons. On Monday, participants travel to Boott Mills to examine a working water-powered turbine and complete power train, following a presentation on the industrialization of textiles in Waltham and Lowell. On Tuesday, participants visit Old Sturbridge to discuss the transition from an agrarian to a market-based economy. Participants test their skills as assembly-line workers in connection with a lecture on industry management structure and working conditions on Wednesday. A Thursday trip to Walden Pond invites further reflection on the morning lecture on Emerson and Thoreau. On the last day, participants take a walking tour to examine Lowell's immigrant history. Secondary readings for the workshop include Thomas Dublin's Lowell: The Story of an Industrial City; Patrick Malone's Waterpower in Lowell; Jack Larkin's The Reshaping of Everyday Life: 1790-1840; and Ira Berlin's Many Thousands Gone, among others.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers that use the Hudson River for a study of modernization in nineteenth-century America.
This workshop focuses on the Hudson River as a case study of the scope of modernization in nineteenth-century America. By focusing on art, literature, and architecture alongside the developments in commerce, industry, and tourism that emerged on the nineteenth-century Hudson, the workshop reveals the several ways in which Americans navigated the waterway. This approach also brings an interdisciplinary perspective to history and a humanities focus to environmental studies. Each day allows for a specific topic with lectures, discussions, readings, and site-based activities tied to a region of the river. Participants begin by considering the mouth of the Hudson as an estuary and economic gateway; they survey New York Harbor by boat, walk the commercial district of Wall Street, and read Walt Whitman's poetry at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. Farther up river, they discuss short stories by Washington Irving, visit his home, Sunnyside, and compare this modest structure to Lyndhurst, its Gilded Age neighbor and home of financier Jay Gould. They study the development of the steamboat and Erie Canal for the purpose of industry and commerce, and the Hudson River School paintings of Thomas Cole as romantic depictions of nature. A session on "Race, Labor, and the Landscape" illuminates the stories of African Americans in the Hudson River Valley. Finally, an afternoon boat trip--enhanced by readings in period guidebooks--enables participants to interpret the river's dramatic geology, iconic vistas, and environmental change through a nineteenth-century lens. Project directors Stephen P. Rice and Meredith Davis are scholars of American studies and art history, respectively. Their expertise is supplemented by Elizabeth Hutchinson (art history, Columbia University), Judith Richardson (English and American studies, Stanford University), Myra Young Armstead (history and Africana studies, Bard College), Thomas Wermuth (history, Marist College and Director of the Hudson River Valley Institute), and Stephen Stanne (Hudson River Estuary Program, Cornell University). In addition to place-based writing exercises, a session entitled "Teaching Your Place" assists teachers in translating the Hudson River workshop to other local sites.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers on the role of Fort Ticonderoga and the northern frontier in the early years of the American Revolution.
This program considers the strategic location of Fort Ticonderoga within the geographic context of Lake Champlain and the northern frontier. With the outbreak of the Revolution at Lexington and Concord, Fort Ticonderoga quickly became a target for two separate forces supported by Massachusetts and Connecticut. The capture of Fort Ticonderoga on May 10, 1775, led by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold, marked the first offensive victory of the Revolution for the colonists. During 1776, Ticonderoga became a vital defensive position protecting New York from a British invasion from Quebec. Continental troops built extensive entrenchments on the Ticonderoga peninsula and across the lake on Mount Independence. In addition to studying the important role Fort Ticonderoga, Lake Champlain, and the northern frontier played during the war, participants explore the influence of the French and Indian War, the people involved on both sides of the Revolution, the sometimes-overlooked role of Benedict Arnold in those early years, the immediate and long-term impact of the Saratoga Campaign, and the lasting legacies of the northern campaign on the Revolution. Noted scholars from across the country, including William Fowler (Northeastern University), Thomas Chambers (Niagara University), Jon Parmenter (Cornell University), Douglas Egerton (Le Moyne College), James Kirby Martin (University of Houston), Carol Berkin (Baruch College, City University of New York), Holly Mayer (Duquesne University), and Todd Braisted (Loyalist Institute), lead participants in a week of lecture-based discussions and site visits, each of which is coordinated with a theme, document, and artifact of the day. The weekly program is organized around chronology and the unfolding of events: Monday, "Pre-cursor to Revolution: The French and Indian War"; Tuesday, "A Revolutionary People"; Wednesday, "Benedict Arnold: An Unlikely Hero?"; Thursday, "The Saratoga Campaign: Turning Point of the Revolution"; and Friday, "Lasting Legacies." Fort Ticonderoga comprises a historic landscape with numerous structures and object-rich exhibits, as well as thousands of original manuscripts, diaries, orderly books, and maps; participants also visit the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, the site of Fort St. Frederick, and Saratoga Battlefield. With the option to design lessons individually or as part of a small group, participants learn how to read and interpret historic sites, documents, and artifacts while preparing teaching modules. To aid in their research, participants are given a primary source reader. A reading list of secondary sources includes James Nelson's Benedict Arnold's Navy and Richard Ketchum's Saratoga.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two teachers on the Hopewell, an American Indian civilization that flourished in Ohio between 100 BCE and 400 CE.
The Creative Learning Factory at the Ohio Historical Society offers a six-day program for teachers to explore the Hopewell landscape at the Newark Earthworks, Fort Ancient, and the five earthworks included in Hopewell Cultural National Historical Park: Mound City, Hopeton Earthworks, Hopewell Mound Group, Seip Earthworks, and High Bank Works. The Hopewell culture reached its fullest expression in the valleys of the major streams that flowed southward into the Ohio River in southern Ohio and neighboring Indiana during the Middle Woodland period, which spanned between 100 BCE and 400 CE. The Hopewell culture is best known for its monumental earthworks and the broad range of exotic raw materials its artisans acquired and crafted into distinctive works of art. Hopewellian earthworks, such as the sprawling Newark Earthworks and Fort Ancient, represent a florescence of art, architecture, ritual, and interregional interaction that was unparalleled in North America up to that time. The workshop immerses teachers in the Hopewell culture of ancient America through field study opportunities and scholarly presentations. Director Elizabeth Hedler (historian, Ohio Historical Society) is joined by lead faculty Bradley Lepper (curator of archaeology, Ohio Historical Society), Terry Barnhart (historian, Eastern Illinois University), Steven Warrant (historian, Augustana College), Robert Riordan (anthropologist, Wright State University), Bret Ruby (archaeologist, Hopewell Culture National Historical Park), Richard Shiels (historian, Ohio State University), Glenna Wallace (Chief of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma), and Linda Pansing (curator, Ohio Historical Society). Specific themes to be covered in the presentation and discussion sessions include "Early Efforts at Surveying and Mapping the Mounds"; "Hopewell Sites and Artifacts in American Popular Culture"; "Ancient Life and Hunting Strategies," "Building the Hopewell Landscape: Fort Ancient and the Earthworks of Southern Ohio"; "Octagon Earthworks and Hopewell Astronomy"; and " 'A Ranging Sort of People': Slavery and Diaspora in Early America." In addition, participants engage in a simulated archaeological dig, visit major excavations, hike interpretive trails, and watch interactive videos to expand their understanding of the sites. Readings for the workshop include Ray Hively and Robert Horn's description of the lunar alignments found at the Newark Earthworks; papers by James Brown and Robert Hall regarding Hopewell culture and ritual; and Peter Nabokov's study of American Indian sacred places.
This program examines Rochester's central role in American reform history and its legacy in American life and thought. The project is organized around two fundamental perspectives: 1) Rochester's vivid landmark geography illuminates the way that American reform was rooted in a new ideology of progress, and 2) Rochester's status as a home base for several of the nation's most important reform leaders underscores the relationship between grand movements for social change and the physical forces that inspired them. Participants visit a rich selection of reform sites including the Erie Canal and Broad Street Aqueduct; the Susan B. Anthony House; Seneca Falls, home to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and site of the first women's rights convention; the Frederick Douglass Collection at the University of Rochester; Third Presbyterian Church, where radical preacher Charles Grandison Finney initiated the Second Great Awakening in the 1830s; and the gravesites of Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass at Mt. Hope Cemetery. Scholarly lectures connected to these guided field trips explore in depth technological and economic changes and their relationship to the reform movement; the rise of religious reform in western New York, particularly the activism of Presbyterian minister Charles Finney; black activism in Rochester and Frederick Douglass's editorial career; women's rights activism and the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848; and Susan B. Anthony, her efforts for women's suffrage, and the Fifteenth Amendment. Jose Torre (State University of New York [SUNY] at Brockport) leads the workshop; visiting scholars include notable historians of early American history and reform movements Erik Seeman (SUNY-Buffalo), Alison Parker (SUNY-Brockport), Carol Faulkner (Syracuse University), and Richard Newman (Rochester Institute of Technology). In partnership with the College at Brockport, the Strong National Museum of Play, with state-of-the-art facilities and proximity to Rochester, hosts the workshop.
Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers on African-American entrepreneurship in the antebellum South, exemplified by Thomas Day and Elizabeth Keckly.
"Crafting Freedom" refers to the ways that African Americans, despite their enslavement or second-class status even as free blacks, were active agents in their own and others' liberation during the era of slavery. The workshop concentrates on Thomas Day (1801-ca. 1861), a furniture maker, and Elizabeth Keckly (1818-1907), a dress designer for the wives of Washington’s elite. In concert with a dozen other "freedom crafters" presented in the workshop, their stories individually and collectively convey the themes of 1) crafting freedom by making money as artisans and entrepreneurs to purchase freedom or to gain greater opportunities for themselves and others; 2) crafting freedom by using cunning and political savvy to resist slavery and to create a more equal and truly democratic society; and 3) crafting freedom through creative expression in the form of hand-made art and craft objects, as well as through poems, essays, and political writing. In addition to the primary examples of Day and Keckly, the teachers explore the stories of twelve other Southern black artisans, entrepreneurs, and abolitionists presented in the Crafting Freedom website: Henry "Box" Brown, Reverend John Day, David Drake or "Dave the Potter," Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, George Moses Horton, Harriet Jacobs, Lunsford Lane, Edmonia Lewis, Harriet Powers, William H. Singleton, Sally Thomas, and David Walker. A broad range of approaches is used to convey the "lived experiences" of these individuals, such as visits to landmarks where they lived and worked, lectures, re-enactments, short videos, hands-on artisan demonstrations, and study of primary source material. Participants visit Union Tavern, the home and shop of Thomas Day; the town of Milton; Burwell School, where Elizabeth Keckly grew up in slavery; and Stagwell Plantation. Led by Laurel Sneed (Apprend Foundation), workshop faculty include William Andrews (English, University of North Carolina), Juanita Holland (independent historian), Michele Ware (English, North Carolina Central University), and Peter Wood (history, Duke University). Master teachers assist the participants in the development of lesson plans.