At this workshop participants will engage in dynamic, in-depth, interdisciplinary study of the Alamo and associated major themes of American history, literature, and popular culture. They will study in intimate seminar settings with major scholars, interact with their colleagues in lively conversations, and develop classroom teaching activities based on individual interdisciplinary research conducted in the Alamo Library Archives, the Institute of Texans Cultures, the American History Center and other Texas archives while working in seminars with five nationally recognized Texas scholars.

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.

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.