This workshop will examine the questions "What did it mean to be enslaved in the United States?," "How did the enslaved respond to bondage?," "How did labor shape their daily lives?," "In what ways did the enslaved resist bondage?," and "How did the enslaved maintain their identities?"

The Center's online resource workshops give high school teachers of U.S. history and American literature a deeper understanding of their subject matter. They introduce teachers to fresh texts and critical perspectives and help teachers integrate them into their lessons. Led by distinguished scholars and running 60 to 90 minutes, they are conducted through lecture and discussion using conferencing software. A resource workshop identifies central themes within a topic and explores ways to teach them through the close analysis of primary texts, including works of art, and the use of discussion questions. Texts are drawn from anthologies in the Center's Toolbox Library. To participate, all that is needed is a computer with an internet connection, a speaker, and a microphone.

This workshop examines the questions "How was African-American community constructed during this period?," "Under what circumstances was it created?," and 'How did evolving concepts of community affect and reflect notions of African-American identity?"

The Center's online resource workshops give high school teachers of U.S. history and American literature a deeper understanding of their subject matter. They introduce teachers to fresh texts and critical perspectives and help teachers integrate them into their lessons. Led by distinguished scholars and running 60 to 90 minutes, they are conducted through lecture and discussion using conferencing software. A resource workshop identifies central themes within a topic and explores ways to teach them through the close analysis of primary texts, including works of art, and the use of discussion questions. Texts are drawn from anthologies in the Center's Toolbox Library. To participate, all that is needed is a computer with an internet connection, a speaker, and a microphone.

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.

Thomas Jefferson is best known as the author of the American Declaration of Independence. Beginning with the imperial crisis that led to the separation and union of 13 British colonies in North America, this course will focus on Jefferson's political thought and career in order to gain a broad perspective on the founding of the United States and its early history. Professors Peter Onuf and Frank Cogliano will emphasize the geopolitical context of the revolutionaries' bold efforts to establish republican governments and federal union. Jefferson and his patriot colleagues were acutely aware of the world historical significance of their revolution and therefore profoundly anxious about its ultimate outcome and legacy. By exploring the rich canon of his writings participants will seek to understand better what the Revolution meant for Jefferson and Jefferson meant for the Revolution. Major themes will include federalism, foreign policy, constitutionalism and party politics, and race and slavery.

A century and a quarter after it came to a close, Reconstruction remains a pivotal but much misunderstood era of American history. This one-week seminar will examine the history of Reconstruction, understood both as a specific period of the American past, which began during the Civil War, and as a prolonged and difficult process by which Americans sought to reunite the nation and come to terms with the destruction of slavery. In political terms, Reconstruction ended in 1877, when the federal government abandoned the idea of intervening in the South to protect the rights of black citizens. As a historical process it lasted to the turn of the century, until new systems of labor and race relations and a new political order were entrenched in the South. And in debates about racial equality, the interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, affirmative action, and the responsibility of the federal government for defining and protecting the rights of citizens, issues central to Reconstruction remain part of our lives today. Reconstruction also offers an opportunity to consider the "politics of history:" how changing interpretations of the past are shaped by the world in which the historian lives and the assumptions he or she brings to the materials of history. During the course of the week, teachers will also annotate one or two documents from the Reconstruction period, for classroom use.

This seminar focuses on the era of the American Civil War and especially on the revolutionary transformation of social and political life in that critical period of U.S. history. Using an array of historical documents as well as lectures, discussions, and (possibly) visits to historical sites, seminar members will analyze the way a war of unprecedented scope drove a process of state building and slave emancipation that reconfigured the nation and remade the terms of political membership in it. Starting with the Supreme Court's decision in the Dred Scott case in 1857 and ending with the constitutional amendments of the postwar period, the seminar will take up the key events and developments in the Union and the Confederacy, including secession, the destruction of slavery (on plantations and in the law), African-American enlistment, and popular politics North and South. By focusing throughout on the racial and gender terms of citizenship, the seminar makes clear what changed—and what did not—in American political life, while conveying a sense of the epic drama by which the United States was remade in the vortex of war.

Using ESSEX History is pleased to welcome back Dr. Cynthia Lyerly (Boston College) to lead a discussion of the culture of Jim Crow. This seminar will provide nuance for discussions of segregation by taking educators out of the courtrooms and voting booths to examine how the Jim Crow system affected everyday life and how depictions of race in popular culture complemented and supported both legal and de facto segregation. Readings for this seminar will focus on the turn of the 20th century and will bring together a diverse amount of scholarship including: Dr. Lyerly's own work on The Clansman author Thomas Dixon, Jr.'s studies on the segregation of consumption and public spaces, and investigations into popular cultural icons such as Shirley Temple and Scarlett O'Hara. This seminar will take place at the NARA facilities in Waltham and will include screenings of portions of several films including Gone With the Wind, The Littlest Rebel, and Within Our Gates, as well as investigations into NARA's archives.The primary sources for the day reveal surprising ways in which the culture of segregation affected life here in New England.

The African Studies Association (ASA) will celebrate the 50th anniversary of its first annual meeting in historic Chicago, IL. As part of the larger program, the event will feature scholars, artists, and community activists from the Chicago area who will facilitate panels, workshops, and discussions tailored especially to educators.

A hundred years ago, in communities across the U.S., white residents forced thousands of black families to flee their homes. Even a century later, these towns remain almost entirely white. Banished tells the story of three of these communities and their black descendants, who return to learn their shocking histories. This event presents a screening of the film, followed by a conversation with director Marco Williams. Williams, a member of the faculty at NYU, is a documentary and fiction film director. His films have been broadcast on cable and public television, including Showtime and Frontline, and have been screened at film festivals throughout the world.