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.

From the National Humanities Center website:

"This seminar will approach American history after World War II as a history of social movements. The first session will explore the black freedom movement with an eye to new scholarly interpretations of a 'long civil rights movement' reaching back to the New Deal and beyond the 1970s and including the North and West as well as the South. The second session will examine the women's movement and the conservative movement for insight into the relationships among various movements. It will conclude with a discussion of how viewing the era from 1945 to 1990 as an era of social movements can bring new coherence to the recent past."

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.

What do an English historian, an Italian wine merchant, an anti-slavery advocate, and the Father of the Constitution have in common? Each of these individuals—Catherine Sawbridge Macaulay Graham, Philip Mazzei, Francis Asbury, and James Madison—paid one or more visits during the years 1783–1789 to the retired leader of the American Revolutionary forces, George Washington, at his Virginia waterfront plantation, Mount Vernon. Perhaps these guests marveled at the brilliant colors of the mansion's main dining room. They might have strolled around the grounds and seen the slaves performing the multitude of tasks necessary to make the plantation flourish. It's likely that the visitors sat on the east-facing piazza and watched the ships sail up and down the Potomac River. Finally, and most significantly, these visitors—and others like them—participated in dialogues and discussions at Mount Vernon which resulted in the creation of the American constitutional system. The Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshop, "Shaping the Constitution: A View from Mount Vernon 1783–89," funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities We the People initiative, is an opportunity for educators (and ultimately their students) to gain a better understanding of Mount Vernon as a crossroads for the discussion of ideas that led to the Constitution. In brief, the workshop offers academic content about Mount Vernon, George Washington, and the Constitution; the opportunity to engage in scholarly discourse with leading academics; a stipend to help cover housing and meal costs; a transportation allowance; networking with other social studies teachers from around the nation; and ongoing professional development opportunities and the opportunity to earn graduate credit.