From the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra website:

"A butcher's son, an instinctive democrat, the composer Antonin Dvořák was self-made. No other European musician of comparable eminence so dedicated himself to finding 'America.' Dvořák’s quest was both concentrated and varied. And Dvořák's embrace was warm: he loved folk music, popular dance and song. He thrilled to Manhattan's polyglot population and in Iowa equally savored what Willa Cather called 'the sadness of all flat lands.'

Jeannette Thurber, a visionary educator, had lured Dvořák from Bohemia to direct her National Conservator of Music. And she handed him a mandate: to help New World composers create a concert idiom Americans would recognize as their own. Dvořák—the proud member of a Hapsburg minority subject to prejudice and discrimination—was galvanized by African-Americans and Native Americas. 'It is to the poor that I turn for musical greatness,' he told a New York reporter. 'The poor work hard; they study seriously.' And Dvořák predicted—his most famous, most controversial, most prophetic utterance—that the future music of the US would be based upon its 'Negro melodies.' In New York—then, as now, a city of immigrants—Dvořák's counsel was taken to heart. But in Brahmin Boston, Dvořák's view that black and 'red' Americans were representative was considered naive at best; Philip Hale, Boston's leading music critic, denounced him as a 'negrophile.'

There was a time when introducing young Americans to 'great music' meant venerating a pantheon of dead and distant Europeans. This is no longer done—but nothing has taken its place. The story of Dvořák's American sojourn, a vital and timely alternative, furnishes the subject matter for the Pittsburgh Symphony's NEH Summer Institute . . .

The instructors are nationally known scholars and educators. The schedule includes field trips and concerts, and culminating curricular projects. The curriculum ranges far afield from music to deal with such subjects as Buffalo Bill, immigration, the slave trade, The Song of Hiawatha, and Yellow Journalism. The core topic is the quest for American identity at the turn of the twentieth century."

From the Mercer University:

"The southern studies faculty of Mercer University will host an NEH institute for high school teachers on Cotton Culture in the U.S. South, 1865-1965.

The institute will allow twenty-two teachers of English, history, economics, government, geography, art, and music to learn about the complex social structures of the U.S. South in the crucial yet frequently misunderstood hundred years after the Civil War, a period that included both major social problems and amazing cultural development. An interdisciplinary panel of experts on the South will use the cultivation of cotton—the South's most significant economic product during this time—as a means to analyze and understand the region's history, geography, economics, politics, culture, and literature . . .

Macon, Georgia, about an hour's drive south of Atlanta, is an ideal location from which to study the history and culture of cotton. Nicknamed 'the market city,' it was once a center of cotton commerce and textile production. Workshops will meet on the campus of Mercer University in downtown Macon, and participants will also visit a nineteenth-century plantation, a working cotton farm, the Civil Rights historic district of Atlanta, and the cotton seaport in Savannah."

From the HistoryMakers website:

"The Institute will examine the entire breadth of African American political history from the period of the early American republic through the election of President Barack Obama. The Institute will cover a variety of topics, including: abolitionist and Afro-American politics during slavery, the temporary emergence and eventual suppression of a black political class after the Civil War, black political factions in the early 20th century, the role of trade unions in early civil rights activism, post-World War II urban politics, the Civil Rights movement, 1970s urban black politics, and the 'New Generation' of black politicians epitomized by such figures as President Barack Obama, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick."

From the Colgate University website:

In this institute, participants will "discover how black and white Americans put their lives on the line toward establishing universal American freedom through the Underground Railroad and the abolitionist movement. . . .[They] will read and discuss significant primary documents and key interpretations, listen to some of the nation's leading experts on the Underground Railroad and Abolitionism, spend evenings watching apposite films and enjoy the facilities of the beautiful Colgate campus during the best season."

From the Amherst College website:

In this seminar, participants "shall read closely, and discuss at length, material ranging from such 'classics' as the Book of Job, Tocqueville's Democracy in America, and Thoreau on civil disobedience, to legal cases, literary treatments of punishment, and film. The range is broad, asking each of us to move out from our areas of specialization to see the subject of punishment through an interdisciplinary lens. Participation in the seminar demands no specialized training in law or jurisprudence."

From the San Diego State University website:

"The seminar will explore several key works by the political theorist, Hannah Arendt: Eichmann in Jerusalem, The Origins of Totalitarianism, and The Human Condition. These works shed light on the problem of evil and the use of terror in the contemporary age, and provide a philosophical perspective on current debates about the use of violence to settle political conflicts, about the conditions of democracy, and about the scope and importance of human rights."

From the University of Kansas website:

"Sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Great War Seminar . . . will bring school teachers from across the country to the University of Kansas in order to learn about the American experience of World War I. Drawing on literature, history, and visual artifacts, participants will examine the ways in which the Great War affected the United States (the 'Home Front'), the nature of American participation in the War (the 'War Front'), and how Americans represented, remembered, and memorialized the War in the decades following its ending in November 1918. As we look towards the 100th anniversary of American participation in the Great War and the changes ushered in by this global conflict, it is especially apt to study the literature and history of the United States' involvement in World War I."

From the Colonial Williamsburg website:

"Designed for high school social studies teachers who teach United States history and government, these intensive week-long workshops will immerse participants in early American history 'on location' in Williamsburg, the restored capital city of eighteenth-century Virginia, and nearby Jamestown and Yorktown. Twenty-five teachers and a returning mentor teacher will be selected for each session.

Participants will be involved in an interdisciplinary approach to teaching social studies with colonial American history as the focus. Teachers will have the opportunity to exchange ideas with noted historians, meet character interpreters, and take part in reenactments of eighteenth-century events. They will review various interactive teaching techniques with a mentor teacher and with each other. Instructional materials in a variety of media will be provided to participants to use in their classrooms. Together with Colonial Williamsburg staff, teachers will prepare new instructional materials for use in their own classrooms."

From the Colonial Williamsburg website:

"Designed for middle/high school social studies teachers who teach United States history and government, these intensive week-long workshops will immerse participants in early American history 'on location' in Williamsburg, the restored capital city of eighteenth-century Virginia, and nearby Jamestown and Yorktown. Twenty-five teachers and a returning mentor teacher will be selected for each session.

Participants will be involved in an interdisciplinary approach to teaching social studies with colonial American history as the focus. Teachers will have the opportunity to exchange ideas with noted historians, meet character interpreters, and take part in reenactments of eighteenth-century events. They will review various interactive teaching techniques with a mentor teacher and with each other. Instructional materials in a variety of media will be provided to participants to use in their classrooms. Together with Colonial Williamsburg staff, teachers will prepare new instructional materials for use in their own classrooms."