Much has been written about the history of Chicago and the land of the living. This course will provide material about Chicago's Necropoli, the land of the dead. Through lecture and slide presentations, participants will discuss the role of cemeteries in early Chicago history, ethnic cemeteries, and mourning practices. The final session will take place at the home of the instructor for an overview of the paraphernalia of funeral homes and cemeteries.

Constructed around an online "toolbox" of texts and documents collected at the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, participants in this seminar will discuss four themes that are central to the Gilded Age: City and Country, focusing on Arcadian mythology, urban realism, and nostalgia; Citizens and Others, especially immigrants, African Americans, and children; Work and Leisure, especially craft, industrialization, and consumerism; and Politics and the State, including party culture, populism, and progressivism. Within each thematic unit, participants will be searching for characteristic sensibilities of the age, as manifest in public life, literature, and/or the arts. Across the discussions, they will try to identify those documents, questions, and exercises that might best enliven their own classrooms.

Linda B. Osborne discusses her book for young people, Traveling the Freedom Road: From Slavery and the Civil War Through Reconstruction, which draws on the Library of Congress collections of former slave interviews to convey the aspirations, sorrows, courage, and hopes of ordinary people living through this period. Osborne mined the Federal Writers' Project slave narratives and materials in the Library's Manuscript, Prints and Photographs, Rare Book and Special Collections, and Geography and Map divisions for this work that focuses on the experiences of African American children. More than 80 archival images complement the text. Major events covered include the rise of the domestic slave trade, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Republican Congress' Reconstruction policies. From Charles Cowley, an enslaved child who had no shoes with which to walk through the snow, to Richard Slaughter, who enlisted in the Union Army at 17, this book reveals the personal hardships and courageous endurance of black youth in 19th-century America.

Participants in this course will examine African American history in the contexts of United States, North Carolina, and world history. They will begin by connecting the experiences of African Americans in early U.S. history to the histories and cultures of the African communities of their ancestors and will follow those cultural connections between Africa and the United States throughout the course.

Course topics include African Americans in the colonies and the early Republic, the Middle Passage, American slavery and the experiences of free African Americans in the antebellum period, the abolition movement, the Civil War and Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Great Migration, the Harlem Renaissance, and the experiences of African Americans during World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II. Throughout the course, participants will discuss African American activism through churches, political organizations, and communities and discover African American culture through art, music, and other cultural forms.

What are the goals of hands on learning? How do museum educators come up with activity ideas? How do they test ideas to make sure things work, and what happens when something fails?

Visitors will see prototypes and finished "products" of activities used successfully in Spark!Lab, and then will have the opportunity to prototype and give feedback on a new activity under development.

This month's prototyping activity is on electrical history. This is being developed to allow visitors to explore electrical science via the works of inventor and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla (1856–1943). Tesla is best known for his many revolutionary contributions in the field of electricity and magnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Tesla's patents and theoretical work formed the basis of many modern technologies now taken for granted, including fluorescent and neon lighting, automation, radio-controlled toys and guided missiles, and wireless transmissions that earned him the name "father of radio."

These seminars are offered to encourage teachers to seriously examine significant events in American history in light of the principles of the American founding, and also to encourage the use of primary source materials in the classroom. The seminars, which include both lecture and discussion, are taught by leading scholars in their field from throughout the nation.

No specifics available.

No specifics available.

No specifics available.

This workshop will examine the questions "What do recollections of formerly enslaved people, gathered by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, tell us about slavery in America?," "What interpretative challenges do the WPA slave narratives pose?," and "How can the WPA slave narratives be used with students?"

The Center's online resource workshops give high school teachers of U.S. history and American literature a deeper understanding of their subject matter. They introduce teachers to fresh texts and critical perspectives and help teachers integrate them into their lessons. Led by distinguished scholars and running 60 to 90 minutes, they are conducted through lecture and discussion using conferencing software. A resource workshop identifies central themes within a topic and explores ways to teach them through the close analysis of primary texts, including works of art, and the use of discussion questions. Texts are drawn from anthologies in the Center's Toolbox Library. To participate, all that is needed is a computer with an internet connection, a speaker, and a microphone.