Constructed around an online "toolbox" of texts and documents collected at the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, participants in this seminar will discuss four themes that are central to the Gilded Age: City and Country, focusing on Arcadian mythology, urban realism, and nostalgia; Citizens and Others, especially immigrants, African Americans, and children; Work and Leisure, especially craft, industrialization, and consumerism; and Politics and the State, including party culture, populism, and progressivism. Within each thematic unit, participants will be searching for characteristic sensibilities of the age, as manifest in public life, literature, and/or the arts. Across the discussions, they will try to identify those documents, questions, and exercises that might best enliven their own classrooms.

Scholarship on American art of the 18th and 19th centuries has proliferated dramatically in the last decade and yet very little has been written on the materials, methods, and settings of painting. This one-day event will delve into some of the workshops, studios, schoolrooms, and parlors where New Englanders of all kinds used a wide variety of materials, such as pencil and pigments on canvas, silk, glass, wood, and tin to create painted images and decorations for themselves, for sale, and for public display. Participants will learn about the daily lives of New England's diverse artists and artisans and the painted objects—from studio art to school girl art and painted decorative arts—that they produced and distributed between 1700 and 1850.

Participants in this workshop will learn about the role of chocolate in colonial America. Topics include cacao and rainforest ecology, world trade, the role of chocolate in the colonial diet, and military uses of chocolate. The day includes a presentation of the new exhibition "Stimulating Beverages: Tea, Coffee, and Chocolate Wares at Historic Deerfield," an open-hearth cooking demonstration, and a tasting of American Heritage Chocolate® Finely Grated Chocolate Drink, which captures the form and flavor of historic chocolate.

Today a common beverage worldwide, tea was once a precious imported commodity. This presentation will introduce the geographic and botanical origins of tea, the role of trade in bringing tea from China to Western consumers, the social and cultural role of tea in 18th-century New England, and the period equipment and furnishings commonly used to prepare and serve tea in a place such as Deerfield, Massachusetts. The day includes a presentation, a tour of the new exhibition "Stimulating Beverages: Tea, Coffee, and Chocolate Wares at Historic Deerfield," a house tour, and a serving of tea.

Top-notch teachers will demonstrate how to teach local California community history—including geography of the local region, the culture of the Gabrielino Indians, the daily life and economic legacy of the local ranchos, the development of the harbor, local government, and the community. Participants will each receive instructional materials kit with model lessons, maps, primary source materials, and literature books.

Top-notch teachers will demonstrate how to teach local California community history—including geography of the local region, the culture of the Gabrielino Indians, the daily life and economic legacy of the local ranchos, the development of the harbor, local government, and the community. Participants will each receive instructional materials kit with model lessons, maps, primary source materials, and literature books.

Top-notch teachers will demonstrate how to teach local California community history—including geography of the local region, the culture of the Gabrielino Indians, the daily life and economic legacy of the local ranchos, the development of the harbor, local government, and the community. Participants will each receive instructional materials kit with model lessons, maps, primary source materials, and literature books.

Top-notch teachers will demonstrate how to teach the California local community history—including geography of the local region, the culture of the Gabrielino Indians, the daily life and economic legacy of the local ranchos, the development of the harbor, local government, and the community. Participants will each receive instructional materials kit with model lessons, maps, primary source materials, and literature books.

Top-notch teachers will demonstrate how to teach local California community history—including geography of the local region, the culture of the Gabrielino Indians, the daily life and economic legacy of the local ranchos, the development of the harbor, local government, and the community. Participants will each receive instructional materials kit with model lessons, maps, primary source materials, and literature books.

This workshop explores the questions "In 1690, to what extent were the arts and material culture of the British Atlantic colonies 'American?,' "To what extent were they 'American' by 1789?," "What major factors defined the evolution in American arts and material culture in this period?," and "To what extent did this evolution reflect the changing self-image of Americans?"