This workshop combines scholarly presentations with on-site investigations of the canals, mills, worker housing, and exhibits of Lowell National Historical Park and of other sites in Lowell's historic district. Sessions draw on scholarly monographs, primary sources (such as "mill girl" letters), and works of literature and historical fiction. The workshop intersperses hands-on activities with lecture-discussions and field investigations. In addition to Lowell's landmark resources, the workshop takes full advantage of Old Sturbridge Village exhibits and scholars to explore pre-industrial rural life and draw on the expertise of scholars and presenters at Walden Pond and Minute Man National Historical Park in Concord, Massachusetts, to explore how prominent authors addressed the question of industrialization's effect on American life, values, and the environment.

This workshop combines scholarly presentations with on-site investigations of the canals, mills, worker housing, and exhibits of Lowell National Historical Park and of other sites in Lowell's historic district. Sessions draw on scholarly monographs, primary sources (such as "mill girl" letters), and works of literature and historical fiction. The workshop intersperses hands-on activities with lecture-discussions and field investigations. In addition to Lowell's landmark resources, the workshop takes full advantage of Old Sturbridge Village exhibits and scholars to explore pre-industrial rural life and draw on the expertise of scholars and presenters at Walden Pond and Minute Man National Historical Park in Concord, Massachusetts, to explore how prominent authors addressed the question of industrialization's effect on American life, values, and the environment.

Participants in this workshop will learn about the 1890s immigration experience on the Near West Side of Chicago through compelling historical fiction narratives and visits to Hull-House and the Taylor Street and Prairie Avenue neighborhoods. Based on the Museum's collection, these stories form the core of the Great Chicago Stories website, an award-winning educational resource.

Participants in this workshop will learn about the 1890s immigration experience on the Near West Side of Chicago through compelling historical fiction narratives. Based on the Museum's collection, these stories form the core of the Great Chicago Stories website, an award-winning educational resource.

Viewed as everything from an extension of frontier ideology to the expression of counter culture, the road narrative genre has been an enduring and popular American cultural form. Whether mainstream or marginal, road narratives feature a protagonist (or pair) who embraces the geographical freedom represented by the automobile in order to attain a range of other mobilities—from the psychological and sexual to the social and economic. In this seminar, participants will examine this genre in relation to an American ideology of both spatial and social mobility. Beginning with the first transcontinental road novel, published in 1912, participants will look at a range of texts that feature protagonists whose identities vary in relation to class, gender, and race in order to understand how road narratives illuminate an issue of mobility central to their larger historical and cultural moments. To enhance our discussion of the primary sources, participants will view a selection of maps, advertisements, and photographs from the Newberry collections related to road travel.

This workshop addresses the questions "In what ways is Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives a document of progressive reform?," "What does How the Other Half Lives tell us about urbanization and immigration?," and "How does Riis use photography in How the Other Half Lives?"

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.

"An NCHE team of Tom Connors, Cindy Stout, and Chris Sink will explore the topic of the Industrialization and America's Rise to World Power at this Teaching American History colloquium."

"This 2008 summer workshop was created for high school history teachers interested in developing a deeper understanding of the forces that shaped America in the Industrial Age. Using Pittsburgh as a model for the forces that shaped the Industrial Era, participants will hear guest lectures from some of the foremost scholars of the period. Participants will also visit a number of historical sites from Gilded Age mansions to steel mills to the location of the Homestead Strike to get a firsthand look at the region. Teachers will leave with a better sense of the time period and ways to bring the issues alive for students in any part of the country."

"In the last decades of the 19th Century, the United States took decisive steps away from its rural, agrarian past toward its industrial future, assuming its place among world powers. This course examines that movement, covering such topics as business-labor relations, political corruption, immigration, imperialism, the New South, and segregation and racism."