Dianne Swann-Wright, Director of African-American and Special Programs at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, looks at what artifacts found at Monticello reveal about the lives of slaves on the estate and the questions such artifacts raise.
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During this one-week workshop, workshop fellows will walk the streets and alleys that Benjamin Franklin walked, step through the doorways that he knew, sit in the churches where he worshiped, and stroll around the houses and public buildings where he helped to found the United States. Fellows will also explore the many rooms of Benjamin Franklin's mind: writer, printer, civic leader, politician, diplomat, scientist, revolutionary, founder. They will read Franklin's words—published and personal—and those of other men and women who lived in the era. They will examine the key aspects of gender, of race, of social class, and diverse other topics.
This one-week workshop provides teachers with fresh perspectives on the complex dynamics of the American Revolution in the Southern backcountry, a place where longstanding hostilities between American settlers erupted into a full-scale civil war between Loyalists and Patriots. This program will make use of the rich historical resources in upstate South Carolina. Participants will visit Walnut Grove Plantation and the living history museum at Historic Brattonsville in order to better understand day-to-day life in the backcountry at the time of the Revolution. Then they will tour the battlefields at Kings Mountain, Cowpens, and Ninety-Six to learn more about the nature of backcountry warfare. They will also explore the ways that art, archaeological evidence, and material culture can help increase student engagement with the subject matter. They will examine the war's impact on the region's white women and on its free and enslaved African Americans. A veteran history teacher will serve as master teacher for the workshop, advising participants on ways they can use the content and resources they gain at the workshop in their own classrooms.
The American South plays a central role in American history, from the first permanent English colony through the election of 2008. This course will focus on key episodes when Southern history and the history of the nation intersected at particularly important points: the emergence and spread of slavery, the founding, the Civil War, the creation of segregation, and the civil rights struggle. The course will be taught in Richmond, Virginia, a city rich in museums and historic sites that the seminar will use to explore the subjects addressed in the seminar.
Historian John Michael Vlach briefly reflects on how slaves constructed communities for themselves independent of their masters' lives at estates such as Hampton National Historic Site.
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Historian John Michael Vlach briefly considers how the different living quarters at Hampton National Historic Site reflect the status hierarchy of their occupants, from the main estate mansion to the overseer's house to the slave quarters.
Historian John Michael Vlach very briefly introduces the overseer's house and slave quarters at Hampton National Historic Site.
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Historian John Michael Vlach compares the grounds of the main estate at Hampton National Historic Site and the slave quarters and working areas of the same estate. He points out what the differences in organization and aesthetic emphasis indicate about the division of society on the estate.
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Historian John Michael Vlach very quickly reviews the architecture of the Hampton Estate in Towson, MD. Built in 1745, the estate's owners worked in various industries and farming ventures, and owned many slaves.
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The Declaration of Independence of 1776 announced the entry of the United States onto the world stage and inaugurated a new genre of document that would be used by various groups in the following centuries to herald their arrival among "the Powers of the Earth." This seminar views the American Declaration from three global perspectives: first, by placing 1776 into the context of contemporary international and global connections; second, by examining the legacy of the Declaration in the century after 1776; and third, by analyzing other declarations of independence since 1776 for their debts to—and divergences from—the American model. The result should be an enriched understanding of the importance of the Declaration in world history, as well as a novel account of what was truly revolutionary about the American Revolution.