This two-day workshop will explore how beliefs about race have shaped—and challenged—American's identity as a land of "freedom and opportunity." It will look at significant events and movements in American history—slavery, immigration, the eugenics movement, the Civil Rights Movement—and will consider legacies of each in American society today. Ultimately, this journey will bring participants back to the present. Examining American history through the lens of race and membership empowers teachers and their students to value how their choices shape contemporary America. Participants will receive a resource book and membership in the Facing History and Ourselves Teacher Network.

This year sees the publication of a wealth of important new literature on America in the 19th century. This abundance of excellent new contributions to the scholarship on these important years is an exciting opportunity to revisit what we all think we know about America in the 19th century, and to rethink what our students need to know. This event will focus on teaching topics with the Civil War as the chronological fulcrum.

Topics include The Technological Revolution, Teaching about Abraham Lincoln, Women in the Civil War, Teaching Military History, and Postwar Reconstruction.

Applications are welcome from social studies and history teachers, curriculum supervisors and junior college faculty. Free room and board and selected stipends are offered.

Abraham Lincoln will stand at the centre of the seminar, though less as a biographical subject than as a prism for exploring key aspects of his age. The themes and topics to be addressed include slavery and the Old South; the abolitionist impulse and the broadening antislavery movement; party political realignment and the sectional crisis of the 1850s; evangelicalism and politics; the election of 1860, the secession of the Lower South, and the coming of war; wartime leadership, political and military; the Civil War 'home front'; emancipation; the elements of Confederate defeat and Union victory; and the meaning of the war for American nationalism.

"Abraham Lincoln will stand at the centre of the seminar, though less as a biographical subject than as a prism for exploring key aspects of his age. The themes and topics to be addressed include slavery and the Old South; the abolitionist impulse and the broadening antislavery movement; party political realignment and the sectional crisis of the 1850s; evangelicalism and politics; the election of 1860, the secession of the Lower South, and the coming of war; wartime leadership, political and military; the Civil War 'home front'; emancipation; the elements of Confederate defeat and Union victory; and the meaning of the war for American nationalism."

"To celebrate Black History Month and Valentine’s Day, NARA archivist Reginald Washington will give a presentation on marriage records among the Freedmen’s Bureau records."

"To celebrate Black History Month and Valentine’s Day, NARA archivist Reginald Washington will give a presentation on marriage records among the Freedmen’s Bureau records."

"The story of slavery in the United States is told in stark and often chilling documents in the records in the National Archives. This workshop will focus on Federal court cases related to the slave trade and Slave Manifests which document the transportation of slaves between American ports."

"An NCHE team will explore the topic of the 19th Century at this Teaching American History colloquium."