Taking a fresh perspective on the Revolution, this seminar asks why we still generally concentrate on the lives and thoughts of the Founding Fathers when in fact ordinary people carried the burden of the American Revolution. How should the people be restored to narratives of Revolution? Were the political ideas that energized their participation the same as those of the celebrated leaders? Did the people stake out more radical positions than did the elite planters and lawyers? What exactly did the Revolution involve for ordinary Americans who lived in small communities?

The seminar will consist of three sessions. The first two, featuring lecture and discussion, will focus on the close analysis of images and primary documents. The third will concentrate on the integration of seminar ideas and material into lesson plans using the Center's Seminar-to-Classroom Guide.

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.

All participants in this Montpelier-sponsored program will receive a free set of We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution textbooks; a lecture by Constitutional Scholar Stephen Frantzich and a signed copy of his book; lesson demonstrations by teachers at the elementary, middle, and high school levels; Representative Democracy of America free resources and training (DVDs and books); elementary, middle, and high school resources for the teaching of Constitution Day; and Project Citizen sessions for middle and high school teachers with free textbooks.

The workshop is open to teachers in Northern Virginia, the District of Columbia, and Prince George County, Maryland.

Montpelier Weekend Seminars are a unique professional development opportunity for social studies teachers and other civic educators. Participants in a Montpelier Weekend Seminar will live and study on the grounds of James Madison's Montpelier, one of the central sites of the American constitutional founding. Participants will receive a collection of primary documents in advance of the seminar, specific to the content of each program, which will be the basis of most discussions. These include writings by James Madison, sections of the Federalist Papers, selections from Antifederalist writers, and other fundamental documents. Each seminar includes an intensive session on ways of reading a document of political or constitutional theory, and will conclude with the lecture "American Citizenship as Constitutional Citizenship: The Exemplar of James Madison."

Teachers will also become acquainted with the curriculum We the People: the Citizen and the Constitution, which is widely used across the nation and is compatible with state and national standards. All participants will receive a complete classroom set of the We the People textbooks, appropriate to the grade level they teach. A classroom set includes 30 student texts and one teacher's guide.

This particular seminar will explore citizenship and questions that include the following: What does it mean to be a citizen of a constitutionally founded nation? Among its other innovations, American constitutionalism has redefined the concept of citizenship and political community—how does the Constitution help us define what it means to be an American? How has our understanding of what is a citizen of the American constitutional order evolved (or devolved)?

This professional development opportunity will bring Texas teachers together with leading scholars to explore important constitutional issues in our nation's history. The program offers teachers the opportunity to work with leading scholars of U.S. history, political science, and law and share strategies for teaching with primary sources.

This multi-date residential institute introduces teachers to the intertwined issues of genocide and human rights. In the late spring participants will be sent a series of extensive text, article, and resource readings. Participants will begin the residential sessions by defining the terms and learning about the philosophical and historical antecedents and common characteristics of genocides and human rights violations. The seminar will then turn toward exploring the historical, political, sociological/anthropological, and contemporary dimensions of genocide and human rights by focusing on the causes, courses, and consequences of the events. The case studies include: Armenia, the Holocaust, Ukrainian famine-genocide, Cambodian, Cyprus, El Salvador, Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Sudan genocidal episodes. Other examples that will be integrated and considered include the Irish famine, the indigenous peoples of the Americas, and the current status of human rights throughout the world.

The institute will also include a series of sessions on how to approach these subjects in the classroom, from the elementary to the high school level. Significant attention will be devoted to the complex methodological issues underlying the presentation of genocide in the classroom including the selection of teaching materials (secondary readings, primary sources, and documentary and entertainment films). Then participants will undertake the sharing of lesson plans developed as a part of the institute's program before concluding with a series of final sessions and considerations on the future prevention of genocide and an activist engagement with the subject.

As an ongoing part of the Institute and its mission, past participants and faculty will continue to function as a cohort after the institute is over by sharing completed lesson plans, developing additional curricular materials, and undertaking educational and public outreach programming.

Heroes, kings, popes, and saints are but a few of the roles mankind uses to depict figures possessing power. How have artists portrayed this power? Museum Educator Joseph Covington provides some answers as he leads you through the Museum's European and American collections.