Educators can transition from school to summer with this two-day, traveling workshop. Both days will begin and end at the North West Company Fur Post. Educators will participate in an in-depth site experience at the Fur Post, venture out on the Snake River on a large Montreal-style canoe, and hike along portage trails used by the voyageurs. They will learn from fur trade experts, share ideas about their favorite lessons, and immerse themselves in Minnesota's fur trade history. Educators may sign up for one or both days.

Ten teachers from the United States will join teachers from the United Kingdom and Ghana to study the history and legacies of the Transatlantic Slave Trade under the direction of professors James Walvin and Stephanie Smallwood. The seminar will cover the history of African-European contact, the nature of African societies in the 15th to 18th centuries, the existing slave trading practices in Africa, the impact of the slave trade on regions of Africa, the character of the coastal trade in the forts and castles, the experience of the Middle Passage, and the numbers and experience of African arrivals in the Americas. Participants will be introduced to major scholarship as well as to the new online Transatlantic Slave Trade Database. The Middle Passages seminar will focus on both historical content and classroom pedagogy, and will include visits to historical and cultural sites in Ghana. Participating teachers will be expected to develop collaborative teaching units with their international partners.

The ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in December 1865 abolished slavery in the United States, formally, officially, and legally. A century and a half after Emancipation, however, the question of slavery still roils the waters of American life. This seminar, led by Ira Berlin, will view the development of chattel bondage in mainland North America from the perspective of the larger Atlantic world. Topics include the nature of the slave trade, the distinction between societies with slaves and slave societies, the evolution of plantation slavery, the transforming face of the Age of Revolutions, the remaking of slavery in the 19th century, and the contemporary debate about the meaning of slavery for American life.

From the Minnesota Historical Society website:

"The newest art standards call for highlighting contributions of Minnesota's American Indian communities. Whether you teach art or social studies, this workshop will provide you with new ideas and resources for creating student projects using different types of media. Sessions will focus on Dakota and Ojibwe artistry past and present, and will include conversations with American Indian artists and educators. Attendees will demo the Minnesota Historical Society's new Ojibwe Shoulder Bag Activity kit."

The present age is one of globalization characterized in part by rapid developments in technology and information systems. But information and technology have often been powerful forces for historical change. This institute will place the current information and technological revolutions in world-historical perspective through a set of case studies drawn from different cultures and contexts from antiquity to the present day. In examining the effects of information and technology on political, economic, and social development, the institute will explore several major themes, including writing and print/information technology; science and society; technology and warfare; and empire and the diffusion and consolidation of knowledge. Presented by professors from the University of California, Berkeley's History Department, and organized around the Content Standards for California Public Schools, these case studies will provide a number of useful tools and strategies for teaching information and technology in world history.

Thomas Jefferson is best known as the author of the American Declaration of Independence. Beginning with the imperial crisis that led to the separation and union of 13 British colonies in North America, this course will focus on Jefferson's political thought and career in order to gain a broad perspective on the founding of the United States and its early history. Professors Peter Onuf and Frank Cogliano will emphasize the geopolitical context of the revolutionaries' bold efforts to establish republican governments and federal union. Jefferson and his patriot colleagues were acutely aware of the world historical significance of their revolution and therefore profoundly anxious about its ultimate outcome and legacy. By exploring the rich canon of his writings participants will seek to understand better what the Revolution meant for Jefferson and Jefferson meant for the Revolution. Major themes will include federalism, foreign policy, constitutionalism and party politics, and race and slavery.

This seminar explores the history of the American antislavery movement, from its institutional and ideological origins in the post-Revolutionary era to the eve of the Civil War. A particular focus of the course will be the historical reality and mythology of the Underground Railroad, understood through the lives, strategies, writings, and fate of black abolitionists.

Movements for women's equality and gender justice have transformed American society over the past few generations. Nancy Cott will focus this seminar on the varied branches of feminism. After reviewing the suffrage campaign and opportunities for women during World War II, the seminar will explore convergences and conflicts among women's groups, both feminist and conservative, emerging after 1960. Topics include the formation of the National Organization for Women, radical feminism, African American and Chicana feminism, reproductive rights advocacy, the women's health movement, Roe v. Wade and its opponents, the women's rights revolution in law, and the campaigns for and against the Equal Rights Amendment.

During the 1850s, the United States was a nation of foreboding and hope. An irresolvable conflict between North and South seemed to be approaching, along with periodic hopes that the divide could somehow be bridged and conflict forestalled. At the start of the decade, the nation's eloquent orators were led by John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster; 10 years later, a new voice had been added to public discourse: that of Abraham Lincoln. Literary artists—including Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and Harriet Beecher Stowe—addressed the issues of slavery, regional autonomy, and federal power both directly and obliquely in poetry and prose. This seminar will explore this ominous yet hopeful era, with the aim of understanding the political and moral issues that drove Americans apart, and how the literature of the period can help readers understand why.