From the National Humanities Center website:

"'Then, thenceforward, and forever free.' Few public documents contain words more stirring than those from the Emancipation Proclamation. The process of Emancipation was momentous, tumultuous, exhilarating, and chaotic. Spirits soared and hopes were crushed as nearly four million black Southerners made the transition from slavery to freedom. How did they actually experience emancipation? What did they hope freedom would mean? How did they pursue it, and what obstacles did they face as they attempted to claim and secure freedom for themselves and their families? You will find some interesting answers to those questions in the remarkable photographs, letters, and eye witness accounts that we will discuss in this workshop."

From the National Humanities Center website:

"The Cult of Domesticity was a societal ideal promoted especially during the mid- and late nineteenth century. It provided a behavioral handbook, a 'code,' for middle-class white women in America that served as a way to value, to judge, and to control how they would both see themselves and be understood by others. Women who questioned the social, economic, and artistic limitations that this code imposed learned to challenge it from within the 'sphere' of influence that it prescribed. This workshop will explore how the cult of domesticity constrained women, and how some women transformed it into a tool of empowerment."

From the National Humanities Center website:

"The Civil War destroyed the institution of slavery and transformed the United States socially, politically, economically, and artistically. Not only did the subject inspire some of the nation's best painters, sculptors, photographers, and illustrators, it also changed the face of town and countryside as monuments to soldiers and statesmen of the Civil War era spread across the landscape. This workshop will pay close attention not only to the imagery of battle but also to the social and political issues which shaped the image of the war and which in many respects continue to shape us today. How did artists come to grips with the new realities of warfare and the unprecedented scale of death it caused? How did the new media of that era (especially photography) change the way that war was represented and understood? What insights did artists offer into the social and political changes happening both on the homefront and battlefront? Did the memorialization of the war in public art create new understandings of the conflict or perpetuate old myths?"

From the National Humanities Center website:

"In a speech that lasted barely three minutes but that has since become a touchstone of American democracy, Abraham Lincoln spoke at the site of a decisive battle in which nearly 8,000 Confederate and Union soldiers had been killed and more than 30,000 wounded. Why has the 'Gettysburg Address' achieved almost scriptural status for American culture? What, in Lincoln's view, was at stake in the battle and the larger war for which it proved to be the turning point? How can we account for the majesty and precision of Lincoln's language? We will discuss these and other questions through a close reading of the speech and consideration of the context in which Lincoln delivered it."

From the National Humanities Center website:

"In the first two centuries after 1492, most colonies in the New World failed. This workshop explores why. We will read accounts of failures and successes and discuss what happened. How much did colonizers' expectations have to do with success or failure? Were the desires and power of local Indians the most important factors? How large a role did weather and climate play? Was luck the deciding factor? Should we be surprised that any succeeded?"

From the National Humanities Center website:

"As Americans in the eighteenth century became wealthier, they developed a taste for such consumer goods as silver tea pots, fine cloth, and expensive furniture. This workshop will explore what they bought, why they bought it, how these purchases changed their image of themselves, and finally, how they led to the American Revolution."

From the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration website:

"Learn about key American photographers and photographic processes and styles, as well as how photography from 1839 to the present day relates to American history. Receive digital images, image guides, and other materials to make connections between photography's history and levels of language arts, science, social studies, and visual art."

Program provided by the Amon Carter Museum.

From the Chicago History Museum website:

"Discover how to incorporate public art into your history instruction. Join James Percoco on a visual journey to see Abraham Lincoln monuments across the country. Percoco compares their meanings when they were unveiled with how we respond to them now, as well as shares tips for analyzing public art with students. See the exhibition 'Abraham Lincoln Transformed' and investigate the Lincoln monument behind the Museum. Fee includes a copy of Percoco's Summers with Lincoln, breakfast refreshments, and classroom resource materials."

From the Chicago History Museum website:

"Tour the Museum's two new exhibitions, 'Abraham Lincoln Transformed' and 'Benito Juárez and the Making of Modern Mexico.' Meet the curators, plan your field trip, and receive classroom resource materials. Enjoy light refreshments and raffle drawings."

From the Newberry Library website:

"This course approaches poetry as a force that shapes ideas of citizenship and cultural identity. We will examine the form and content of familiar and less familiar poems from the period of the American Revolution to the present, including works by Longfellow, Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, and Joy Harjo."