Participants in this workshop will learn about Chicago's meatpacking history and the legacy of the Maxwell Street Market through compelling historical fiction narratives. Based on the Museum's collection, these stories form the core of the Great Chicago Stories website, an award-winning educational resource.

This seminar will explore how 10 United States presidents, ranging from Theodore Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan, shaped national life during the 20th century. Reading profiles of these presidents by historians and other scholars, participants will look at why some presidents have succeeded and others failed. They will ask how each president addressed two overarching issues: What is the proper role of government in the United States? What role should America play in the larger world?

Although big bands, solo vocalists, and jazz soloists dominated the swing era (1920s–1950s), there existed a simultaneous stream of music from small ensembles, vocal and instrumental. Participants will listen to singing groups such as the Andrews Sisters, Ink Spots, and Modernaires. We will hear instrumental combos such as the Benny Goodman Sextet, Modern Jazz Quartet, and the George Shearing Quintet. Finally, participants will sample the folksong revival of the 1950s. No musical training is necessary.

Bob Dylan created some of the most significant music of the late 20th century and influenced generations of listeners. Yet Dylan found much of his inspiration not in contemporary music but in the music and folk customs of the past. This course will explore the links between Dylan and the ballad tradition. It will examine his influences, listen to his music, and offer close readings of his expansive songbook.

ChicagoAncestors.org is a free website where visitors can find and share historical information about Chicago. Are you researching the history of a neighborhood? Looking for the church where your great-grandparents got married? Interested in mapping the places where your ancestors lived? This workshop can help. Participants will learn how to use the tools available on this popular interactive website and find out how they can contribute to the growing amount of historical data available online to Chicago researchers.

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.

The Middle East has been a central focus of American foreign policy since the end of World War II. This seminar will examine the strategic significance of the region, its internal dynamics, and the basic outlines of American foreign policy over the past few decades. While the first half of the seminar will concentrate on the historical context of the region, the second half will turn to the future. Participants will look at the various challenges facing the new President̬such as Iran, Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—and the various options open to him.

Viewed as everything from an extension of frontier ideology to the expression of counter culture, the road narrative genre has been an enduring and popular American cultural form. Whether mainstream or marginal, road narratives feature a protagonist (or pair) who embraces the geographical freedom represented by the automobile in order to attain a range of other mobilities—from the psychological and sexual to the social and economic. In this seminar, participants will examine this genre in relation to an American ideology of both spatial and social mobility. Beginning with the first transcontinental road novel, published in 1912, participants will look at a range of texts that feature protagonists whose identities vary in relation to class, gender, and race in order to understand how road narratives illuminate an issue of mobility central to their larger historical and cultural moments. To enhance our discussion of the primary sources, participants will view a selection of maps, advertisements, and photographs from the Newberry collections related to road travel.

Too often, students view Civil Rights in isolation—they do not understand the rich historical background of African American history or the legacies of the movement in the more recent past. They often know some of the major civil rights figures like Martin Luther King, Jr. or Rosa Parks, but they do not grasp the complexities of civil rights leadership, or the experience of the movement's foot soldiers—the students in SNCC, the freedom riders, or the everyday people who marched, boycotted, protested, and volunteered to make the movement happen. This course will try to explore the movement from all of these perspectives using, where possible, firsthand accounts from the people who lived this important history.

The instructor will assume that the main historical outlines of the movement are familiar to K–12 teachers—instead of recounting that basic history, participants will spend much of the time delving into lesser-studied events of the movement and the primary sources that will allow them to explore their own ideas about the movement and its meanings in detail.

This course will allow for the opportunity for deep historical analysis and interpretation using primary sources. The best way to learn history is by doing history. Participants will tackle documents, images, newspaper accounts, artistic expressions, film, and other sources. By doing so, they will develop their own arguments and ideas about the movement, and help future students do the same. Many of the resources participants will use have been recently added to the internet and they should be exciting additions to the course, and to historical scholarship more broadly. As participants mine these sources, they will hopefully enjoy the historical process and also get some great ideas for classroom activities for their students.

The instructor has selected websites and multimedia resources that will give participating teachers access to literally thousands of documents including newspaper accounts, oral history interviews, government documents, photographs, works of art, film clips, and more. Participants will have the opportunity to analyze these sources through engaging activities to create a lesson plan for classroom use; to receive individualized, constructive feedback and answers to content-oriented questions from a well-versed instructor; and to join other teachers from across the state in lively online discussions throughout the course.