John Steinbeck, Voice of a Region, Voice for America

Description

During this two-week institute teachers and scholars will reconsider iconic American writer John Steinbeck, author of more than 30 books, winner of the Pulitzer Prize (in 1940, for The Grapes of Wrath), the Nobel Prize for Literature (1962), and the United States Medal of Freedom (1964). Days will be filled with study, exploration of the area, discussion, and reflection. During the two weeks, participants will have ample opportunity to appreciate "Steinbeck Country" through exploration of the land and Steinbeck's literature.

Contact name
Judnick, Maria
Contact email
Registration Deadline
Sponsoring Organization
San Jose State University
Phone number
408-924-4487
Target Audience
K-12
Start Date
Cost
Free; $2,000 stipend
Course Credit
Optional continuing education units (CEUs are not equivalent to college course credit, however) can be earned for 1-6 units at the nominal fee of $25 per unit. These units have been arranged at one of the host institutions, CSU Channel Islands, in Camarillo, California. Additional work beyond attendance and full participation at the institute is not required to earn this credit.
Duration
Thirteen days
End Date

Jump at the Sun: Zora Neale Hurston and Her Eatonville Roots

Description

This weeklong seminar will bring together a distinguished team of humanities scholars who will provide an interdisciplinary exploration of Zora Neale Hurston's life and work. Participants will examine Hurston's accomplishments within the context of the historical and cultural development of the Eatonville community. They will grapple with compelling questions about how this unique black enclave fueled Hurston's appreciation of folk culture, inspired her literary works, created her racial identity, and formed her sometimes controversial views on race.

Contact name
Schoenacher, Ann
Contact email
Registration Deadline
Sponsoring Organization
Florida Humanities Council
Phone number
727-873-2009
Target Audience
K-12
Start Date
Cost
Free; $750 stipend
Duration
One week
End Date

Exploring Historical Fiction

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Question

Do you have any suggestions for historical fiction that could be incorporated into our Language Arts classes on the topics of the Oregon Trail or Lewis and Clark? Currently we use Will Hobbs's Ghost Canoe to help reinforce teaching about Coastal Native Americans in the history classes.

Answer

Thanks for your inquiry. We often get requests for recommendations of historical fiction to use when studying particular time periods and historical events. So below, I first list some open-access digital databanks of fiction (and occasionally nonfiction) to use in the history/social studies classroom. Then I share some recommendations specific to your request.

Databases of Recommended Books

The National Council for the Social Studies’ (NCSS) Notable Books lists are a great resource. Each year, a panel of educators and librarians read more than 200 books to select these “notable books.” Lists from prior years can be downloaded for free and you can purchase the most recent list or access it for free with membership in NCSS. For each of these books, general reading levels and applicable NCSS standards are identified and a brief annotation gives an overview of content. OurStory, a project of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, provides a useful bookfinder. Here you can search by general historical topic, age group, book type, and award. Searching this bookfinder for “19th century history” and "middle school" brings up 47 fiction and nonfiction books. Please note that it’s not clear when this list was last updated as it does not include recent award winners. The American Library Association's yearly list of Notable Children’s Books includes books suitable for children up to, and including, age 14. Books that win awards such as the Coretta Scott King Award and Newbery Medal are added to the list. (The ALA also has a page dedicated to book lists, but few specifically pertain to the history classroom.) The Reading and Writing Project at Teacher’s College has generated a list of historical fiction using teachers’ recommendations which can be accessed as a PDF here. This list just includes title, author, book type (i.e., picture or chapter) and level, but organizes the books by historical topic including a set of recommendations for “Westward Expansion and Prairie Life.” PBS has a list of historical fiction for grades four and five, which can be accessed here. Some states provide lists of historical fiction and nonfiction. Search California’s database using “Oregon” as keyword or “Lewis” as keyword and you will get more than 20 fiction and nonfiction books.

Specific Recommendations

All these online resources can help you find a book, but don’t forget your local and school libraries and independent bookstores. Often children’s librarians will have wonderful suggestions and your local bookseller may also have a quality selection of historical fiction. Indeed, Martha Dyer, librarian at Mission Hill Middle School in California, helped me compile the following recommendations. (One source she used that is not mentioned here is a database available at the local public library, “NoveList,” produced by Ebscohost.) Here are some titles worth investigating: Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie: The Oregon Trail Diary of Hattie Campbell (1997) by Kristiana Gregory. This is a quality selection from the Dear America series. My Travels with Capts. Lewis and Clark, by George Shannon (2004) by Kate McMullan. Seaman: The Dog Who Explored the West with Lewis & Clark (1999) by Gail Langer Karwoski. The Journal of Jedediah Barstow, an Emigrant on the Oregon Trail: Overland, 1845 (2002) by Ellen Levine. This is part of the My Name is America series. Thomas Jefferson: Letters from a Philadelphia Bookworm (2000) by Jennifer Armstrong. This is part of the Dear Mr. President series. The books below do not directly address the specific time period or event you ask about, but they could also be good choices as they are engaging and relevant.

  • Call of the Wild by Jack London (1903)
  • The Devil’s Paintbox by Virginia McKernan (2010)
  • The Game of Silence by Louise Erdrich (2005)
  • The Journal of Wong Ming-Chung: a Chinese Miner, California, 1852 by Laurence Yep (2000)

And finally, consider one experienced middle school history teacher’s response to your question: “I usually have my students reading excerpts from Lewis and Clark's journals. Some of those read like a fictional story at times!” Good luck!

For more information

Teachinghistory.org addresses World War I and II literature in another Ask a Master Teacher response and 20th-century literature for the high school classroom in another.

See this response for five picture books for teaching the American Revolution to fifth graders.

Also see this Teaching Guide on using “book sets” that include fiction and nonfiction texts.

The Jack London Online Collection

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The full-text versions of more than 40 works by Jack London (1876–1916), a prominent early 20th-century writer who was also involved in the socialist movement, are available here. Materials include famous fiction, such as The Call of the Wild (1903), and lesser-known works, such as War of the Classes (1905), a collection of speeches London delivered on behalf of socialism. The website includes 20 novels, 19 short story collections, two collections of essays, three plays, and six additional published nonfiction works. The website is keyword searchable. In addition to providing the writings of Jack London, there is plenty of biographical and historical information about London and his times. Outside resources are suggested, divided into those suitable for students and those for teachers. Combining London's original works with other contextual materials provided by the site could be valuable for studying early 20th-century American literature and journalism and its relation to radical political and social currents of the time.

Willa Cather Archive

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Willa Cather (1873–1947) wrote 12 novels and numerous works of short fiction. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 and is known for her intensive examination of life in the midwestern U.S. This extensive archive is dedicated to her life and work. At its core is a collection of all of her novels, short fiction, journalistic writing, interviews, speeches, and public letters published before 1922. All materials are fully searchable. Notably, both O Pioneers! and My Antonia are accompanied by extensive scholarly notes, historical context, and introductory material. Accompanying her published materials is a collection of 2,054 of Cather's letters (again annotated and fully searchable), more than 600 photographs of Cather and important people and places in her life, audio of Cather's Pulitzer Prize acceptance speech, and a short video clip of Cather. Several scholarly articles and a text analysis tool are also available.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875

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An ambitious attempt to digitize 19th-century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography, American Fiction, 1815–1875, this collection of texts is a work-in-progress. At present, the website offers close to 3,000 texts by 1,456 authors. These include the well known, such as Louisa May Alcott and Mark Twain as well as hundreds of less well-known authors. Topics include slavery, reform, education, politics, love, children, and war. Close to 800 have been fully edited and SGML-encoded so that users may access chapter and story divisions through table of content hyperlinks. The remaining texts can be read either as facsimiles of original pages or in unedited transcriptions. The ability to perform single word and phrase searches on all material in the database—whether fully encoded or not—is powerful.

The Wizard of Oz: An American Fairy Tale

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The cultural impact of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is the focus of this well-designed exhibit. Three galleries offer images and explanatory text.

"'To Please a Child': L. Frank Baum and the Land of Oz" examines various aspects of the book, including W.W. Denslow's artwork, Baum's original copyright application, and an early review of the book appearing in the October 1900 issue of The Literary Review. "To See the Wizard: Oz on Stage and Film" looks at two of the most famous productions of Baum's book, the 1902–1903 stage play that became one of Broadway's greatest successes and the classic 1939 MGM movie, including color posters and a full-page color advertisement placed in the September 1939 issue of Cosmopolitan "To Own the Wizard: Oz Artifacts" examines Oz-related novelties, including the Wizard of Oz Monopoly game by Hasbro, a Wizard of Oz stamp, and "The Royal Bank of Oz" rebate check from MGM.

Mark Twain in His Times

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Based on Mark Twain's works and life, this engaging website focuses on the author's life and career, including the creation of his popular image, the marketing and promotion of his texts, and live performances. Five sections center on major works, including Innocents Abroad, Tom Sawyer, and Pudd'nhead Wilson. Each section is placed within a historical context.

The website offers an extensive collection of text sources, including 50 published texts or lectures, 16 letters, and over 100 texts and excerpts from other late 19th-century authors. Twenty-nine items from publishers, more than 80 newspaper and magazine articles, 35 obituary notices, over 100 period literary reviews, and hundreds of illustrations and photographs round out this informative site. An interactive graphic essay explores the issue of racism through various American illustrations of "Jim" in Huckleberry Finn. This is an invaluable resource for studying American literature and its place within the 19th-century marketplace and landscape.

Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture

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This well-designed, comprehensive website explores Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin as an American cultural phenomenon. "Pre-Texts, 1830–1852" provides dozens of texts, songs, and images from the various genres Stowe drew upon, including Christian texts, sentimental culture, anti-slavery texts, and minstrel shows. The section on the novel includes Stowe's preface, multiple versions of the text, playable songs from the novel, and Stowe's defense against criticism.

A third section focuses on responses from 1852 to 1930, including 25 reviews, more than 400 articles and notes, as well as nearly 100 responses from African Americans and almost 70 from pro-slavery adherents. "Other Media" explores theatrical and film versions, children's books, songs, poetry, and games. Fifteen interpretive exhibits challenge users to investigate how slavery and race were defined and redefined as well as analyze how various characters assumed a range of political and social meanings.