There is virtually no area of study that cannot shed light on the textile culture of North Carolina. Literature, music, science, economics, history, sociology, religion, and art help define and explain the rich history and changing culture of North Carolina textiles. Beginning in the 1880s, the textile industry built the "new south." Today, changes in this industry are helping to create another "new south." In this interdisciplinary seminar, participants will explore not only textile history but will also think about the role and importance of textiles. What the “product” was/is, how it is made and by whom, and where it is made have implications for the rapidly changing nature of textiles in North Carolina and the South.

The ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in December 1865 abolished slavery in the United States, formally, officially, and legally. A century and a half after Emancipation, however, the question of slavery still roils the waters of American life. This seminar, led by Ira Berlin, will view the development of chattel bondage in mainland North America from the perspective of the larger Atlantic world. Topics include the nature of the slave trade, the distinction between societies with slaves and slave societies, the evolution of plantation slavery, the transforming face of the Age of Revolutions, the remaking of slavery in the 19th century, and the contemporary debate about the meaning of slavery for American life.

Ten teachers from the United States will join teachers from the United Kingdom and Ghana to study the history and legacies of the Transatlantic Slave Trade under the direction of professors James Walvin and Stephanie Smallwood. The seminar will cover the history of African-European contact, the nature of African societies in the 15th to 18th centuries, the existing slave trading practices in Africa, the impact of the slave trade on regions of Africa, the character of the coastal trade in the forts and castles, the experience of the Middle Passage, and the numbers and experience of African arrivals in the Americas. Participants will be introduced to major scholarship as well as to the new online Transatlantic Slave Trade Database. The Middle Passages seminar will focus on both historical content and classroom pedagogy, and will include visits to historical and cultural sites in Ghana. Participating teachers will be expected to develop collaborative teaching units with their international partners.

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.

In this institute, K–12 teachers, in conjunction with a group of leading scholars and public historians, will explore a neglected but crucially important aspect of early American history—the two-and-a-half-century web of connections between the rise of New England as a commercial and industrial center and the enslavement of Africans. New England's extensive and complicated relationship with slavery is a crucial part of the American story that almost never is clearly and comprehensively discussed in American history textbooks. But this is an important story, and there is no better place to explore it, and learn how to teach about it, than in Rhode Island, not only the center of the American slave and provisioning trades, but also the birthplace of the American industrial revolution. The two-week institute will include lectures by experts, tours of historic sites associated with these key developments, and guided explorations of original 18th- and 19th-century print and graphic sources that document this fascinating, often painful history. Teachers will be able to bring back to their classrooms and departments new knowledge, new primary documents and images, and fresh ideas and strategies for teaching this sensitive material, including shared lesson plans.

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.

Participants in this workshop will travel throughout the Delta as they visit sites where significant events occurred. They will discuss and learn about issues involving civil rights and political leadership, immigrants' experiences in the Delta, the Blues, the great migration, agriculture, and the Mississippi River, among other things. They will sample Delta foods, visit local museums, and listen to the Blues. Field trips will roam as far as Greenville, Greenwood, and Memphis, with stops in between.

This 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. The workshop intersperses hands-on activities with lecture-discussions and field investigations. In addition to Lowell's landmark resources, the workshop takes 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.