From the Appalachian State University website:

"We invite you to take part in this historic commemoration year by attending this workshop sponsored by Appalachian State University, which is located less than five miles from the Blue Ridge Parkway in Boone, North Carolina. Participants will have a chance to experience the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains while learning about the history behind the most visited National Park Service site. Based on the campus of Appalachian State University, participants will spend mornings in combination lecture and discussions along with hands-on sessions working with a variety of primary sources. Each participant will have a chance to collect materials and ideas for use in developing curriculum projects. Each afternoon, we will take field trips to explore many of the cultural resources along the Parkway. Evenings will be free to explore the Appalachian Mountain town of Boone, work in the state of the art library, or relax at one of the many local coffee shops while enjoying some traditional Appalachian music. Throughout the week, participants will have many chances to interact with faculty who are experts on the history of the Blue Ridge Parkway and the region of Appalachia as well as meet rangers and managers from the National Park Service."

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 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 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 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:

"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."