This place-based, interdisciplinary workshop uses Henry David Thoreau’s ethic and his experience at Walden Woods as a model, and features a daily mix of lectures, field trips, readings, discussions and reflection time. The participants encounter speakers from different fields with expertise in the areas of natural history, writing, literary analysis, history, and the environment.

In June 2008, Harpers Ferry National Historical Park and the Harpers Ferry Historical Association will host a one-week workshop that will enable 4th–12th grade teachers to walk in the footsteps of John Brown, John Cook, Shields Green, Robert E. Lee, J.E.B. Stuart, Heyward Shepherd, Fountain Beckham, and many others as they learn about events of national significance that have occurred in Harpers Ferry. Educators will get to interact with historians, curators, museum educators, and other professionals in the field. This institute will prepare teachers to use historic documents, artifacts, and images to enhance their teaching and to inspire students with the stories that make history come alive in the classroom and beyond.

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."

"An NCHE team of Matt Pinsker, Al Jacobs, and Jim McNeill will explore the topic of Abolition and the Emancipation Proclamation and Taking Sides: The Confederacy at this colloquium."

This seminar, led by Bruce Laurie of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, will explore antislavery and abolition movements in the nineteenth century, offering "in-depth exploration of historic personalities, themes, and events and intensive work with primary source materials."

This seminar explores the history of the American antislavery movement, from its institutional and ideological origins in the post-Revolutionary era to the eve of the Civil War. A particular focus of the course will be the historical reality and mythology of the Underground Railroad, understood through the lives, strategies, writings, and fate of black abolitionists.

"This seminar will consider two different American Revolutions. One was the struggle for American self-determination. The second was the ongoing struggle for liberty and equality enunciated in the Declaration of Independence. The seminar will consider the ideological, economic, social and political causes of the War for Independence. It will also consider the war as a political, military, and social struggle. This course will discuss critical steps made during and after the war for liberty and equality: the abolition of slavery in the North, enhancement of women's role and enfranchisement of unpropertied white men. Since New York figured as a critical field of conflict in both American Revolutions, we will take advantage of our location in New York to visit some of the most important Revolutionary sites."

"This seminar will consider two different American Revolutions. One was the struggle for American self-determination. The second was the ongoing struggle for liberty and equality enunciated in the Declaration of Independence. We will consider the ideological, economic, social and political causes of the War for Independence. We will also consider the war as a political, military, and social struggle. This course will discuss critical steps made during and after the war for liberty and equality: the abolition of slavery in the North, enhancement of women's role and enfranchisement of unpropertied white men. Since New York figured as a critical field of conflict in both American Revolutions, we will take advantage of our location in New York to visit some of the most important Revolutionary sites."