From the Florida Humanities Council website:

"Daily life in Eatonville was recounted in Hurston's first fieldwork as an anthropologist. Her best known folklore collection, Mules and Men (1935), included black music, games, oral lore, and religious practices reflective of her early life growing up in Eatonville. Hurston's ethnographic study of her racial heritage influenced several Harlem Renaissance writers, and later such contemporary authors as Alice Walker and Toni Morrison.

"Eatonville provides a fascinating vantage point for examining black life and social structures in the South after the Civil War. To paraphrase Hurston, how did these self-governed Negro towns differ from the 'black back-side of some white-folks' town?' Is it merely coincidental that this historic town brought forth one of America's most fascinating and provocative writers, a writer who provides us with a new perspective on race?

"These weeklong seminars will bring together a distinguished team of humanities scholars who will provide an interdisciplinary exploration of Hurston's life and work. They include a literary scholar who has written extensively on Hurston; a folklorist who wrote the application that placed Eatonville on the Historic Register; a Hurston biographer; the director of the American Folk Life Center at the Library of Congress, where most of Hurston's folklife collection resides; and a colleague of Hurston's in the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Participants will examine Hurston's accomplishments within the context of the historical and cultural development of the Eatonville community. They will grapple with compelling questions about how this unique black enclave fueled Hurston's appreciation of folk culture, inspired her literary works, created her racial identity, and formed her sometimes controversial views on race."

From the Florida Humanities Council website:

"Daily life in Eatonville was recounted in Hurston's first fieldwork as an anthropologist. Her best known folklore collection, Mules and Men (1935), included black music, games, oral lore, and religious practices reflective of her early life growing up in Eatonville. Hurston's ethnographic study of her racial heritage influenced several Harlem Renaissance writers, and later such contemporary authors as Alice Walker and Toni Morrison.

"Eatonville provides a fascinating vantage point for examining black life and social structures in the South after the Civil War. To paraphrase Hurston, how did these self-governed Negro towns differ from the 'black back-side of some white-folks' town?' Is it merely coincidental that this historic town brought forth one of America's most fascinating and provocative writers, a writer who provides us with a new perspective on race?

"These weeklong seminars will bring together a distinguished team of humanities scholars who will provide an interdisciplinary exploration of Hurston's life and work. They include a literary scholar who has written extensively on Hurston; a folklorist who wrote the application that placed Eatonville on the Historic Register; a Hurston biographer; the director of the American Folk Life Center at the Library of Congress, where most of Hurston's folklife collection resides; and a colleague of Hurston's in the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Participants will examine Hurston's accomplishments within the context of the historical and cultural development of the Eatonville community. They will grapple with compelling questions about how this unique black enclave fueled Hurston's appreciation of folk culture, inspired her literary works, created her racial identity, and formed her sometimes controversial views on race."

From the Tsongas Industrial History Center website:

"The Inventing America Workshop combines scholarly presentations with on-site investigations of the canals, mills, worker housing, and exhibits of Lowell National Historical Park and of other sites in Lowell's historic district.

"Sessions draw on scholarly monographs, primary sources (such as 'mill girl' letters), and works of literature and historical fiction. We intersperse hands-on activities with lecture-discussions and field investigations.

"In addition to Lowell's landmark resources, we take full advantage of Old Sturbridge Village exhibits and scholars to explore pre-industrial rural life and draw on the expertise of scholars and presenters at Walden Pond and Minute Man National Historical Park in Concord, Massachusetts, to explore how prominent authors addressed the question of industrialization's effect on American life, values, and the environment.

Hands-on activities deepen participants' understanding by engaging them in simulations where they weave cloth, build water-powered mill systems, and work on assembly lines. Participants even cook a meal over fireplaces at Old Sturbridge Village and discuss farm vs. factory life after a boardinghouse dinner at the Boott Cotton Mills."

From the Tsongas Industrial History Center website:

"The Inventing America Workshop combines scholarly presentations with on-site investigations of the canals, mills, worker housing, and exhibits of Lowell National Historical Park and of other sites in Lowell's historic district.

"Sessions draw on scholarly monographs, primary sources (such as 'mill girl' letters), and works of literature and historical fiction. We intersperse hands-on activities with lecture-discussions and field investigations.

"In addition to Lowell's landmark resources, we take full advantage of Old Sturbridge Village exhibits and scholars to explore pre-industrial rural life and draw on the expertise of scholars and presenters at Walden Pond and Minute Man National Historical Park in Concord, Massachusetts, to explore how prominent authors addressed the question of industrialization's effect on American life, values, and the environment.

Hands-on activities deepen participants' understanding by engaging them in simulations where they weave cloth, build water-powered mill systems, and work on assembly lines. Participants even cook a meal over fireplaces at Old Sturbridge Village and discuss farm vs. factory life after a boardinghouse dinner at the Boott Cotton Mills."

From the Washington University website:

This institute will "offer participants an exciting opportunity to learn about one of the most extraordinary cultural periods in American history. This institute will teach you about the complex urban world that black Americans made between World War I and World War II, during the years of the Great Migration out of the south."

From the University of Kansas website:

Participants in this institute will engage in a "conversation that not only looks at why Wright was so influential during his lifetime, but more importantly why he matters to us today. We will take a closer look—and get a fuller sense of—Wright's world, that America that he knew and wrote about. How we can find ways of connecting his world and ours for our students, we will ask, as we focus on Wright's three major books: Uncle Tom's Children (1938), Native Son (1940), and Black Boy (1945). This will be a rare opportunity to read, research, write and create as you participate actively in the Institute's seminars, discussion groups and workshops and build lasting relationships with other teachers and Wright specialists."

From the Mercer University:

"The southern studies faculty of Mercer University will host an NEH institute for high school teachers on Cotton Culture in the U.S. South, 1865-1965.

The institute will allow twenty-two teachers of English, history, economics, government, geography, art, and music to learn about the complex social structures of the U.S. South in the crucial yet frequently misunderstood hundred years after the Civil War, a period that included both major social problems and amazing cultural development. An interdisciplinary panel of experts on the South will use the cultivation of cotton—the South's most significant economic product during this time—as a means to analyze and understand the region's history, geography, economics, politics, culture, and literature . . .

Macon, Georgia, about an hour's drive south of Atlanta, is an ideal location from which to study the history and culture of cotton. Nicknamed 'the market city,' it was once a center of cotton commerce and textile production. Workshops will meet on the campus of Mercer University in downtown Macon, and participants will also visit a nineteenth-century plantation, a working cotton farm, the Civil Rights historic district of Atlanta, and the cotton seaport in Savannah."

From the San Diego State University website:

"The seminar will explore several key works by the political theorist, Hannah Arendt: Eichmann in Jerusalem, The Origins of Totalitarianism, and The Human Condition. These works shed light on the problem of evil and the use of terror in the contemporary age, and provide a philosophical perspective on current debates about the use of violence to settle political conflicts, about the conditions of democracy, and about the scope and importance of human rights."

From the Henry Ford:

"How would you like to spend mornings discussing your passion for American history with distinguished university professors, mid-days on field trips to more than a dozen historic farms, mills and laboratories, and the afternoons planning activities for your students? Would you like to develop methods of using all five of your senses and your students' different learning styles to bring America's Industrial Revolution out of the books and into living history?

The story of America's Industrial Revolution is an epic tale, full of heroes and heroines, villains and vagabonds, accomplishments and failures, sweated toil and elegant mechanisms, grand visions and unintended consequences. How did the United States evolve from a group of 18th century agricultural colonies clustered along the eastern seaboard into the world's greatest industrial power? Why did this nation become the seedbed of so many important 19th century inventions and the birthplace of assembly-line mass production in the early 20th century? Who contributed? Who benefited? Who was left behind?

School teachers, university scholars and museum curators will explore this story during [this week-long workshop]."

From the Henry Ford:

"How would you like to spend mornings discussing your passion for American history with distinguished university professors, mid-days on field trips to more than a dozen historic farms, mills and laboratories, and the afternoons planning activities for your students? Would you like to develop methods of using all five of your senses and your students' different learning styles to bring America's Industrial Revolution out of the books and into living history?

The story of America's Industrial Revolution is an epic tale, full of heroes and heroines, villains and vagabonds, accomplishments and failures, sweated toil and elegant mechanisms, grand visions and unintended consequences. How did the United States evolve from a group of 18th century agricultural colonies clustered along the eastern seaboard into the world's greatest industrial power? Why did this nation become the seedbed of so many important 19th century inventions and the birthplace of assembly-line mass production in the early 20th century? Who contributed? Who benefited? Who was left behind?

School teachers, university scholars and museum curators will explore this story during [this week-long workshop]."