University of Pittsburgh professor Marcus Rediker will discuss his book "The Slave Ship: A Human History," which explores life and relationships, for and between both crew and slaves, on slave ships traveling between Africa and the Americas.

"This seminar, led by Ira Berlin, will view the development of chattel bondage in mainland North America from the perspective of the larger Atlantic world. Topics include the nature of the slave trade, the distinction between societies with slaves and slave societies, the evolution of plantation slavery, the transforming face of the Age of Revolutions, the remaking of slavery in the nineteenth century, and the contemporary debate about the meaning of slavery for American life."

This seminar will "enhance participants' knowledge of Africa, the Middle Passage, and the people who arrived here in North America in slavery. They will do so by developing projects of their own choosing involving early Atlantic history, literature, or culture up to and including the early nineteenth century." Topics, week by week, will include "Organization: African Understandings," "More African Meanings," "Embarkation, Exile," "Remembering Africa in America," and "Research Results and Teaching Applications."

The story of sugar's transformation from luxury product to ubiquitous commodity in the modern Western diet offers a rich vantage on transatlantic and world history. It also prods students and scholars to deeper consideration of the myriad social, cultural, and economic processes within which even the most seemingly banal substances can be enmeshed. Seminar participants will explore these connections and processes, with special attention to the Caribbean. The link between sugar cultivation and the transatlantic slave trade—and the enduring, intertwined legacies of both—will be an important area of discussion and analysis.

In this institute, K–12 teachers, in conjunction with a group of leading scholars and public historians, will explore a neglected but crucially important aspect of early American history—the two-and-a-half-century web of connections between the rise of New England as a commercial and industrial center and the enslavement of Africans. New England's extensive and complicated relationship with slavery is a crucial part of the American story that almost never is clearly and comprehensively discussed in American history textbooks. But this is an important story, and there is no better place to explore it, and learn how to teach about it, than in Rhode Island, not only the center of the American slave and provisioning trades, but also the birthplace of the American industrial revolution. The two-week institute will include lectures by experts, tours of historic sites associated with these key developments, and guided explorations of original 18th- and 19th-century print and graphic sources that document this fascinating, often painful history. Teachers will be able to bring back to their classrooms and departments new knowledge, new primary documents and images, and fresh ideas and strategies for teaching this sensitive material, including shared lesson plans.