Voice of the Shuttle: Web Page for Humanities Research

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This gateway website was created by English professor Alan Liu. It contains over 70 pages of links to humanities-related resources on the internet and provides a guide to online resources in 26 subject categories, including anthropology, legal studies, history, women and gender, and minority studies.

Each link is subdivided. For example, the Minority Studies link is divided into 11 subcategories, including African American, Chicano Latino Hispanic, and Native American history. The History category is subdivided into 19 sections, such as Family History, Military History, and national and regional categories like North America, with subheadings for Canada and United States. The United States history subheading contains over 500 links to primary documents from all periods of American history.

This site contains both primary and secondary resources, and there is a History Teaching Resources link that provides resources for teachers of World History, syllabi for women and gender-related courses, and a guide to using historical places as teaching tools. The site is easy to navigate and contains a keyword search engine.

WWW-Virtual Library, History Central Catalogue

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Created by an international group of volunteer institutions, this site offers a gateway with thousands of links to general history resources and seeks to provide "effective tools for practicing historians wishing to work online." Links are presented for the following categories: "Research: Methods and Materials"; "Eras and Epochs"; "Historical Topics"; and "By Countries and Regions."

Thomas Jefferson on Politics and Government

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This site provides access to more than 2,700 quotations by Thomas Jefferson. Hosted by the University of Virginia, the site is designed and maintained by an individual admirer of Jefferson. The home page provides a 350-word description of the site, which is divided into six sections and 56 subsections of about 50 quotations each. For each quotation, from five to 100 words, the site provides a date, context, and citation information. Visitors may download a collection of 400 popular Jefferson quotations. Sections range from the "Fundamentals of Government" to the "Prospects of Self-Government." Subsections cover topics such as inalienable rights, foreign relations, and the duties of citizens.

The site may be searched by subject and search terms are highlighted within search results. There are links to 27 archives of Jefferson material, while 11 other links lead to sites about ideas that Jefferson is associated with, such as liberty and human rights. An annotated bibliography includes eight books about Jefferson. This site will be useful for anyone interested in what Jefferson had to say on topics related to government.

Adams Family Papers

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This website offers images and transcription for 1,198 letters in the correspondence between John and Abigail Adams, 51 files from the Diary of John Adams, and 108 files from the Autobiography of John Adams. The correspondence and the diary span the late 18th to early 19th centuries. The correspondence includes such diverse topics as the Continental Congress, European diplomacy, family matters, and the Revolutionary War. In addition to the daily diary entries, The Diary contains financial accounts, copies of letters, drafts of essays, and notes on books and legal cases. John Adam's autobiography is a retrospective narrative of his life up to 1780.

The user can search, browse each collection, or browse all documents by date. Additionally, the site offers a lesson plan based on the correspondence between John and Abigail Adams targeted to the middle school level. Six links are provided to related websites. The website is useful for researching or teaching John and Abigail Adams, particularly those interested in their family life.

New Jersey Public Records and Archives

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For historians researching New Jersey, this site's main interest will be its "state archives." "Catalog" provides access to nearly 200 pre-established searches on the archive's manuscript series, genealogical holdings, business and corporate records, cultural resources, and maps. Topics include military conflicts, society and economics, transportation, public works agencies, and photographic collections, as well as state, county, municipal, and federal government records. The other major feature consists of eight image collections with themes that include New Jersey Civil War soldiers, Spanish-American War Infantry Officers, Spanish-American War Naval Officers, Gettysburg Monuments, and views of the Morris Canal. The archives site also includes a searchable index of New Jersey Supreme Court cases, a transcription of New Jersey's 1776 constitution, and a table summarizing the holdings of the state archives. This site is a useful aid for researching the history and culture of New Jersey.

Red White Blue & Brimstone: New World Literature and the American Millennium

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An exhibit of 101 images with a 10,000-word essay that tracks the influence of the Book of Revelations' apocalyptic vision of history in shaping conceptions of America and its destiny for religious zealots and others from the colonial era to the present. With images primarily from published texts—covers, title pages, illustrations, and relevant pages of writing—the exhibit is divided into 14 chronological sections, each opening with a quote from Revelations and detailing its relevance in successive historical periods. The exhibit begins with the period of the English Reformation, when John Foxe's Book of Martyrs, exported to America, related contemporary political events to scripture and established a timeline that proved influential over the next 250 years. The site covers beliefs that American Indians were descendants of the lost tribes of Israel; Cotton Mather's sermons as the culmination of a century of speculation about America's place in the apocalyptic scheme; early nationalist ambitions as fulfilling prophecy; and the influence of Revelations on Thomas Jefferson. The site also looks at William Miller's numerologically-based predictions of the end of the world in 1843; millennial movements in the antebellum era; urban exposÎs that conceived of American cities as present-day incarnations of Babylon; and 20th-century anti-Semitic thought. Well organized, the exhibit provides a useful introduction to students of American religion and culture of the persistence of the power of the Book of Revelations, but exaggerates its importance with the odd claim that no other book has "produced a more profound vision of America's hopes, duties, dreams, and destiny."

A Look at Slavery through Posters and Broadsides

Teaser

How to identify the author, audience, date, and message of historical posters.

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Description

Using historic posters, this lesson engages students in analyzing primary sources by identifying their author, intended audience, date, and message.

Article Body

This well-planned lesson, which uses posters on slavery and abolition, teaches students to ask important questions as they read a primary source. First, the teacher models the task by analyzing a representative poster in front of the classroom. In small groups, students then analyze additional posters, locating such information as author, audience, purpose, and message. They use this information to consider the attitudes towards slavery that the posters convey.

One strength of the lesson is that the primary sources are given in two formats: students receive historically evocative reproductions of the original posters along with easy-to-read typed transcriptions. Some teachers may choose to highlight important text, particularly for beginning readers; other teachers will want to leave it up to students to locate and identify this crucial information.

This lesson appears in the December 2004 issue of History Now, a quarterly journal of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

Topic
Slavery and Abolition
Time Estimate
1 day
flexibility_scale
2
Rubric_Content_Accurate_Scholarship

Yes Lesson is accurate and up-to-date.

Rubric_Content_Historical_Background

No The lesson plan's Teacher Resources section includes links to information about historical context. It's up to teachers, however, to decide how much background students will need.

Rubric_Content_Read_Write

Yes In class, all students read, and one student per group records information on a Poster Inquiry Sheet. In the suggested homework assignment, students each write a news story about their assigned poster.

Rubric_Analytical_Construct_Interpretations

Yes The Poster Inquiry Sheet provides students with a method for identifying and interpreting historical facts.

Rubric_Analytical_Close_Reading_Sourcing

Yes During the modeling and the group work, students learn and practice how to read primary sources.

Rubric_Scaffolding_Appropriate

Yes Some language in the posters may be difficult, but teachers can choose to highlight sections of text to reduce the amount or difficulty of necessary reading.

Rubric_Scaffolding_Supports_Historical_Thinking

Yes The teacher's modeling step provides a helpful scaffold, as does the Poster Inquiry Sheet.

Rubric_Structure_Assessment

No Although the lesson plan does not include an assessment rubric, teachers can check in with small groups to assess student learning.

Rubric_Structure_Realistic

Yes The modeling provided in Steps One, Two, and Three is pedagogically useful. However, reading every single poster before the class may be excessively time-consuming. Teachers may want to discuss just one poster and then go around the classroom to check in with small groups as needed.

Rubric_Structure_Learning_Goals

Yes The lesson plan helps students to learn about slavery and abolition while providing a method for analyzing primary sources.

Slavery in New York

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Focusing on the experiences of Africans and African Americans in New York City, this collection presents nine galleries that explore various themes and time periods in the history of slavery. These include the Atlantic slave trade; slavery in Dutch New York; the growth of slavery in British Colonial New York; freedom for blacks during the Revolutionary War; the Gradual Emancipation Act of 1799; free blacks in public life; Emancipation Day (July 4, 1827), and the history of scholarship on slavery in New York City. Each gallery has three panels: a gallery overview, a main thematic presentation, and one focusing on people, places, and documents. Of special interest are two interactive maps with timelines in the Dutch New York gallery and the Revolutionary War gallery; a picture gallery on the portrayal of blacks in New York City's public life; and profiles of nine African Americans who lived in New York City during the early republic.

Colonial Connecticut Records, 1636-1776

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This scanned and partially searchable version of the 15-volume Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, from April 1636 to October 1776, was originally published between 1850 and 1890. Users can search documents by date, volume, and page number. Each of the 15 volumes, covering consecutive time periods, includes alphabetical, hyperlinked subject terms for browsing. The site also provides access by type of material: charters, documents, inventories, laws, letters, and court proceedings. Keyword searching may be available in the future, but even without this option, the site offers a wealth of accessible material on politics, legal matters, Indian affairs, military actions, social concerns, agriculture, religion, and other aspects of early Connecticut history.

USC Archival Research Center

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These varied collections document the history of Los Angeles and southern California. "Digital Archives" offer more than 126,000 photographs, maps, manuscripts, texts, and sound recordings in addition to exhibits. Nearly 1,200 images of artifacts from early Chinese American settlements in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara are available, as is the entire run of El Clamor Publico, the city's main Spanish-language newspaper from the 1850s. Photographs document Japanese American relocation during World War II and photographs, documents, and oral history audio files record Korean-American history. The archive also includes Works Projects Administration Land Use survey maps and Auto Club materials. A related exhibit, "Los Angeles: Past, Present, and Future", offers collections on additional topics, including discovery and settlement, California missions, electric power, "murders, crimes, and scandals," city neighborhoods, cemeteries, Disneyland, African American gangs, and the Red Car lines.