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 Department of the Interior Museum website:

"Emily Palus, National Curator and NAGPRA Coordinator for the Bureau of Land Management, will explore the many stories of the Sandpainting of the Arrow People rug and discuss how the textile represents the transition of Navajo weaving from a local craft industry to a national art market and the historical evolution of sandpainting imagery from sacred to secular."

How did World War I affect politics in the United States? Why did the prestige and power of American business dramatically increase in the 1920s? What explains the remarkable cultural ferment of this period? What place did religious and spiritual values assume in the United States during the 1920s? How did concepts of citizenship and national identity change in the decade after World War I? How did women and African Americans struggle to advance social equality? How did modernizing and traditional forces clash during the decade?

This institute will explore these and other questions through history, literature, and art. Under the direction of leading scholars, participants will examine such issues as immigration, prohibition, radicalism, changing moral standards, and evolution to discover how the forces of modernity and traditionalism made the 1920s both liberating and repressive. Participants will assist National Humanities Center staff in identifying texts and defining lines of inquiry for a new addition to the Center's Toolbox Library, which provides online resources for teacher professional development and classroom instruction.

The seminar will explore the lived experience of ordinary Americans during the colonial period of history. Topics will include family and household, community organization, making a living, religious belief and practice, witchcraft and magic, and shared patterns of human psychology. Material culture will also receive considerable emphasis: domestic architecture, furnishings, and the natural environment. Mornings will be devoted to lectures and discussion; afternoons to field trips and library work.