The Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier will host the Maryland We the People Summer Seminar for middle and high school teachers. The seminar will begin with lectures, discussions, and group activities and conclude with a simulated congressional hearing. Teachers will receive a full classroom set of We the People textbooks.

The Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier will host the Virginia We the People Summer Seminar for middle and high school teachers. The seminar will begin with lectures, discussions, and group activities and conclude with a simulated congressional hearing. Teachers will receive a full classroom set of We the People textbooks.

This Institute will explore segregated education in Virginia and trace the efforts of African Americans who fought for quality schools in the years before Brown v. Board of Education. It will examine Brown and both efforts to implement and resist the decision in Virginia. Finally, it will look at the legacy of Brown. Participants will interact with historians and educators and will take part in lectures, discussions, and workshops and go on field trips to Farmville and the state capitol. They will work with Virginia Historical Society staff to explore teaching strategies and the Society's resources.

This institute will help teachers take advantage of the instructional power of primary sources. Though many teachers are familiar with the importance of primary sources, they are not sure how to use them in the classroom, how to develop inquiry-based lessons, or how to help students use them in projects. In this workshop, Library of Congress specialists will introduce participants to the unique characteristics of primary sources, while helping explore some of the millions of digitized primary sources available on the Library's website. Participants will look at ways to introduce students to primary sources and how to incorporate them in inquiry-based classroom activities.

The story of sugar's transformation from luxury product to ubiquitous commodity in the modern Western diet offers a rich vantage on transatlantic and world history. It also prods students and scholars to deeper consideration of the myriad social, cultural, and economic processes within which even the most seemingly banal substances can be enmeshed. Seminar participants will explore these connections and processes, with special attention to the Caribbean. The link between sugar cultivation and the transatlantic slave trade—and the enduring, intertwined legacies of both—will be an important area of discussion and analysis.

One way citizens of large republics are educated in the principles of government is through novels. With this in mind, this course examines selections from the work of Mark Twain. Not only is Twain America's most enduringly popular author, but his novels depict important aspects of the American character and have much to say about such themes as equality, slavery, freedom, modern science, Christianity, and democratic leadership, all of which are crucial for understanding American history and politics. The main texts will be Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court; if time permits, participants will also consider The Adventures of Tom Sawyer or The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson.

How did World War I affect politics in the United States? Why did the prestige and power of American business dramatically increase in the 1920s? What explains the remarkable cultural ferment of this period? What place did religious and spiritual values assume in the United States during the 1920s? How did concepts of citizenship and national identity change in the decade after World War I? How did women and African Americans struggle to advance social equality? How did modernizing and traditional forces clash during the decade?

This institute will explore these and other questions through history, literature, and art. Under the direction of leading scholars, participants will examine such issues as immigration, prohibition, radicalism, changing moral standards, and evolution to discover how the forces of modernity and traditionalism made the 1920s both liberating and repressive. Participants will assist National Humanities Center staff in identifying texts and defining lines of inquiry for a new addition to the Center's Toolbox Library, which provides online resources for teacher professional development and classroom instruction.

This workshop offers academic content about place-based western history and women's suffrage on the western frontier juxtaposed with myths of the West and contemporary women's issues in the West.

It affords opportunities to engage in study and conversation with leading scholars; an introduction to four forms of primary historical sources—the built environment, artifacts, government records, and private papers—all of which have application in all history classrooms; and networking with other social studies, history, English, and other subject matter teachers, librarians, and media specialists, from grades K–12, representing a variety of states.

This workshop will consider the myths and realities of four themes central to the figure of Abraham Lincoln. First, participants will examine Lincoln and American Nationalism. To more fully understand this theme, they will examine how historians have portrayed Lincoln over time. A starting point for this examination will be reading from primary sources including Lincoln's Message to Congress in Special Session (July 4, 1861), followed by selected sections from secondary sources: James McPherson's Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution, and Barry Schwartz's Lincoln at the Millennium. Central to this examination is the question of how Lincoln used history, especially the American Revolution and the Founding Fathers, to develop his rhetorical defense of the Union and justification for action. Second, participants will consider Lincoln and power. The examination of this theme centers on the dilemma of how to fight a civil war and preserve civil liberties. Lincoln scholars will provide participants with opportunities to discuss how Lincoln attempted to preserve the Union without sacrificing the Constitution. The investigation begins with required reading of selections from David Donald's Lincoln and David Potter's Jefferson Davis and the Political Factors in Confederate Defeat. Participants will probe critical issues such as suspension of habeas corpus, censorship of the press, and declaration of martial law through reading Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address. Third, participants will consider Lincoln and freedom. It has been argued that Lincoln changed the meaning of the Constitution. Participants will investigate this theme by first reading the Gettysburg Address and selected letters in which Lincoln describes his vision of equality. Then, they will analyze selections from Garry Wills's 1992 The Words that Remade America, which suggests that the change went beyond the relationship between the federal government and the states to the relationship between the federal government and the individual. How might Lincoln's words, "a new birth of freedom" suggest change in the vision of equality? Finally, participants will consider Lincoln and race. They will examine the Emancipation Proclamation and the complex issue of race in America. Readings for this theme draw on selections from the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the Emancipation Proclamation and selected Lincoln letters, and readings from Lerone Bennet's Was Abe Lincoln a White Supremacist? and Philip Shaw Paludan's Emancipating the Republic: Lincoln and the Means and Ends of Antislavery. Much of Lincoln's position of honor in American history rests upon his action to free the slaves. Yet, some view the proclamation as an empty gesture or even a conservative attempt to forestall more radical action. These discussions will provide participants with an opportunity to explore the evolution of Lincoln's attitude toward emancipation that culminated in his support for the 13th Amendment.

The workshop investigates the interaction between Europeans and Native Americans in the struggle to control North America, both during the colonial era and the early years of American independence. Participants will study early French contact with the Iroquois Great League of Peace, warfare between France and Great Britain and the Iroquois caught in the middle, Patriot struggles against Loyalists and Indians during the American Revolution, and key battles fought at the Fort during the War of 1812, which resulted in the eventual dispossession of the Iroquois after that conflict.