From the Chicago Architecture Foundation:

"The skyscraper, more than any other building type, gives American cities their distinctive character. During this week-long workshop, participants will investigate the American skyscraper as a physical and cultural construct. Scholars will present skyscrapers as artifacts and symbols of transformations in American life. Walking tours of the Loop to explore some of Chicago's most spectacular examples of tall buildings, coupled with hands-on activities, will help bring this iconic building type to life. The workshop will help you create engaging lessons across the K-12 curriculum including social sciences and history, language arts, science, mathematics, and fine and visual arts."

From the Chicago Architecture Foundation:

"The skyscraper, more than any other building type, gives American cities their distinctive character. During this week-long workshop, participants will investigate the American skyscraper as a physical and cultural construct. Scholars will present skyscrapers as artifacts and symbols of transformations in American life. Walking tours of the Loop to explore some of Chicago's most spectacular examples of tall buildings, coupled with hands-on activities, will help bring this iconic building type to life. The workshop will help you create engaging lessons across the K-12 curriculum including social sciences and history, language arts, science, mathematics, and fine and visual arts."

From the Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville website:

"[This one-week workshop] will explore Abraham Lincoln's life in Springfield and New Salem Village, Illinois and the political and historical challenges he faced as President. Join us as we hear from outstanding Lincoln scholars drawn from universities in the St. Louis area."

From the Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville website:

"[This one-week workshop] will explore Abraham Lincoln's life in Springfield and New Salem Village, Illinois and the political and historical challenges he faced as President. Join us as we hear from outstanding Lincoln scholars drawn from universities in the St. Louis area."

In the Gilder Lehrman Institute in American History:

"Across the country, an increasing number of teachers have discovered an exciting and innovative way to promote a love of history. Easy-to-use software (such as Microsoft's PhotoStory and Movie Maker, and Apple's iMovie) and extensive copyright-free online images (like those found on the Library of Congress's American Memory site) make it possible for students to create high-quality, Ken Burns-like videos combining narration, text, graphics, historical images, and music. Professor Mintz, a pioneer in the application of new technologies to history teaching and research, will lead teachers through the process of creating digital documentaries with their students."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History:

"Among all bilateral relations in today's world, the relationship between the United States and the People’s Republic of China is arguably the most important and dynamic.

The development of U.S.-China relations is tumultuous. Early in the twentieth century, America's 'Open Door' policy, allegedly designed to help prevent China from being divided up by foreign powers, was followed by a nationwide anti-American boycott movement in China. In the Second World War, China and the United States were allies. Yet only four years after the war's end, they entered a total confrontation that would last more than two decades. During the Cold War, both of the only two major 'hot wars' that America was involved occurred in East Asia—first in Korea and then in Vietnam—mainly for containing Communist China's 'expansionist ambitions.' When U.S.-China relations reached the low ebb, a rapprochement between Beijing and Washington happened in the early 1970s, changing the two countries from bitter enemies to quasi 'strategic partners' while, at the same time, transforming the orientation and essence of the global Cold War. Since the end of the Cold War, the 'U.S.-China partnership' has encountered serious challenges as many in America have difficulty in comprehending the implications of China's continuous rise as a prominent world power.

This course begins with reviewing the encounters between the U.S. and China in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It explores the confrontation and cooperation between the two countries during the Cold War by focusing on such key cases as the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Taiwan Question, and the Chinese-American Rapprochement. It concludes with identifying the opportunities and challenges facing the U.S. and China in the twenty-first century. The basic aim of the course is to help the participants develop a better understanding of how nations with different values, cultural-historical backgrounds, political institutions, and levels of economic development may coexist in today's world."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History:

"This seminar explores how an economically and politically powerless racial minority wrested dramatic change from a determined and entrenched white majority in the American South. It will examine the changing nature of protest from the 1940s to the 1950s; the roles of Martin Luther King, Jr., local movements, and women; and the relative importance of violence and non-violence. Participants will discuss how they can use the experiences of schoolchildren, teachers, and students in the crises of the 1950s and 1960s to bring home the realities of the civil rights movement in the classroom. Topics include the Little Rock 9 and their teachers in 1957, students and sit-ins, and the use of schoolchildren in the 1963 Birmingham demonstrations."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History:

"The modern civil rights movement was the most important social protest movement of the twentieth century. The movement helped cultivate national leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Bayard Rustin and Fannie Lou Hamer. It was responsible for eradicating the American Apartheid system known as Jim Crow and it was the major reason for the passage of some of the most important laws in twentieth century America, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This explores the origins of the civil rights movement and its impact on America."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History:

"Today, scarcely anyone questions the importance of the Supreme Court in American government and American politics. Indeed, we are often told we should worry about who becomes the next President because he or she will control appointments to the Court. Was the Court always this important? If not, how did it come to occupy that position? This course will examine some key moments in the history of the Court and the country. It will focus on the Court's opinions and look at them in the ways a lawyer does, but also study the historical context necessary to understand the evolving role of the Supreme Court. Critical moments we may look at include the Jeffersonian ascension and Marbury v. Madison, the Bank War and McCulloch v. Maryland, Progressivism and Lochner, the New Deal, segregation and Brown, free speech and NYT v. Sullivan, abortion and Roe v. Wade, Bush v. Gore, and others. Our objective will be to get a feel for how the Court works, how it handles controversial issues, and how it has secured its unique position in American politics."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History:

"The Cold War dominated the second half of the twentieth century, but until recently we had only an imperfect sense of what it was all about. Historians wrote about it, of necessity, from within the event they were seeking to describe, so that there was no way to know its outcome. And because only a few Western countries had begun to open their archives, these accounts could only reflect one side of the story. Cold War history, hence, was not normal history: it was both asymmetrical and incomplete.

The end of the Cold War and the subsequent partial opening of Soviet, Eastern European, and Chinese archives have revolutionized the field. Everything we thought we knew is suddenly up for reconsideration, whether because of the new documents available to us, or as a consequence of knowing how it all came out. Even as this happens, though, the memories of those who lived through the Cold War are rapidly fading, and a new generation of students has no memory of it at all.

This seminar will seek to integrate the latest scholarly research on Cold War history and the ways in which that subject is presented in the classroom. We shall use a variety of means: lectures, books, documents, video documentaries, and the resources of the world-wide web. There will also be ample opportunity, we hope, for you to learn from one another, and for us to learn from you. It will be, in short, a week of total immersion in the lengthy, occasionally dangerous, and (almost) always intriguing history of the Cold War, filled with debate and new information."