2012 Fall Schedule
Slavery in the Atlantic World
Leader
James Sweet, Professor of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison
National Humanities Center Fellow
About the Seminar
The first “20. and odd” Africans to arrive in British North America are generally believed to have landed in the Chesapeake in 1619 aboard a Dutch man of war. Though this watershed marks the beginning of the African slave trade to the lands that would eventually become the United States, its importance to the broader history of slavery and the slave trade in the Atlantic world is minimal. Prior to 1619, more than 500,000 Africans had already been toiling as slaves in Europe, Latin America, and the Spanish Caribbean. Moreover, thousands of Native Americans served as forced laborers for European colonists in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Teaching the Slave Narrative: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
Leader
Vincent Carretta, Professor of English, The University of Maryland
National Humanities Center Fellow
About the Seminar
Over the past thirty-five years, historians, literary critics, and the general public have come to recognize the author of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself as one of the most accomplished English-speaking writers of African descent. Equiano’s autobiography is universally accepted as the fundamental text in the genre of the slave narrative. Excerpts from the book now appear in every anthology and on any website covering American, African-American, British, and Caribbean history and literature of the eighteenth century. Interest in Equiano has not been restricted to academia. He has been the subject of television shows, films, comic books, and books written for children. The story of Equiano’s life is part of African, African-American, and Anglo-American, African-British, and African-Caribbean popular culture.
Teaching The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Leader
Robert A. Ferguson, George Edward Woodberry Professor of Law, Literature and Criticism
Columbia University, National Humanities Center Fellow
About the Seminar
Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiograhpy stands near the headwaters of American literature and culture. The quintessential rags-to-riches story, the first in a seemingly endless line of self-help books, a guide to the deliberate creation of a public image, the Autobiograhpy describes the emergence of an archetypal American. Franklin was the only Founder to put his life successfully on paper.
Consumer Politics in the American Revolution
Leader
T.H. Breen, William Smith Mason Professor of American History,
Northwestern University, National Humanities Center Fellow
About the Seminar
The men and women who made the American Revolution were united as consumers before they came together as rebels. Through the mid-1700s, as the wealth of the colonies increased, Americans from Portsmouth to Savannah bought the same imported goods. Their shared desire for and dependence upon British cloth, ceramics, tea, and other items created a common experience. When the colonists became convinced that they could preserve their liberties only by overthrowing British rule, they drew upon this experience to unite in a new form of political protest.
Deism and the Founding of the United States
Leader
Ryan K. Smith, Associate Professor, George Mason University
About the Seminar
During the 17th and 18th centuries, many “freethinking” Europeans embraced Deism, a theology that subjected religious truth to the authority of human reason. In colonial America, Deism found few adherents, but those who were attracted to it tended to be wealthy and educated, leaders in colonial society and politics. Today, debate swirls around the role Deism played in the founding of the nation. What was this “religion of nature”? How can we explain it to students? Who among the Founders were Deists? What influence did Deism have on the culture of the new nation?
The Work of Slavery
Leader
Heather Williams, Associate Professor of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
National Humanities Center Fellow
About the Seminar
No matter when it was done, from the colonial period through the Civil War, or where it was done, from New England to Georgia, slave labor was hard, often dangerous work. Yet in North America the tasks slaves performed and the amount of control they exercised over them varied greatly. Slaves built boats, crafted chairs, cooked meals, forged iron, steered ships, washed clothes, and plowed fields. Some worked in gangs under the watchful eye and ready whip of an overseer, while others worked largely on their own with little supervision. Still others, hired out, worked much as free labor did. How did work shape the lives of the enslaved? What do the varying degrees of supervision — and varying degrees of freedom tell us about the position of slaves in American society and their relations with their owners?
Teaching Poe’s “The Raven” in Context
Leader
Eliza Richards, Professor of English and Comparative Literature
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, National Humanities Center Fellow
About the Seminar
Edgar Allan Poe is a perennial classroom favorite. His heavy reliance on rhyme, for which his contemporaries labeled him “the jingle man,” makes his poems appealing curiosities to students, and his tales, with their demented narrators, are an endless source of cheap thrills. But is there more to Poe than sound and fright? What can he tell us about nineteenth century American culture, and how can the context in which he wrote illuminate his art? This seminar will address these questions through close reading of his widely taught poem “The Raven.” Explore the culture of sentiment and mourning that gave us both the talking bird and the lost Lenore.
Teaching In Our Time in Our Time
Leader
Sean McCann, Professor of English, Wesleyan University, National Humanities Center Fellow
About the Seminar
Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time helped to create the idiom of modernist literature, which would go on to become the predominant literary aesthetic of the 20th century. Emerging from the world of the Parisian little magazines, Hemingway brought the literary avant-garde to mass popular audiences. In the process he defined an enduring cultural style and shaped our understanding of World War I as well as the modern world it seemed to epitomize. Examining Hemingway’s artistic influences and the historical context of In Our Time, we will try to understand why this slim volume turned out to have such a large impact.
These seminars focus on teaching with primary sources — historical documents, literary texts, visual images, and audio material. Emphasizing critical analysis and close reading, they address the Common Core State Standards while giving teachers the opportunity to deepen their content knowledge.
Seminar texts are provided free online. The Center draws texts from a variety of sources, including America in Class® primary sources and lessons, and attempts to select fresh material that will invigorate classroom instruction.
Cost: $35.00 per seminar. Email Caryn Koplik, Assistant Director of Education Programs, for special pricing.
Recertification Credit: The National Humanities Center programs are eligible for recertification credit. Each seminar includes ninety minutes of instruction plus approximately three hours of preparation. Because the seminars are conducted online, they may qualify for technology credit in districts that award it. The Center will supply documentation of participation.