Summer Seminars and Institutes
In response to NEH's We the People program, an undergraduate college offers a four-week institute for twenty-five school teachers on the constitutional tradition in the American states. The project takes the approach that the study of state constitutions offers a means for examining political shifts and social and economic transformations. The institute's program addresses the concept of the "complete constitution," involving state, federal, and tribal levels; traditions of constitutional design; constitutional successes and failures; and the impact of state constitutions on public and private life. During the institute, participants read a variety of historical sources, including colonial charters, state constitutions dating from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, national constitutional documents, influential commentaries such as The Federalist, and important court cases, as well as works of current scholarship. In addition to the project director, who is a leading authority on American constitutionalism, the institute features a visiting faculty of political scientists, historians, and legal scholars. The program consists of lecture and discussion sessions, field trips, and work by the participants on teaching projects relating to their own state constitutions. A master teacher assists the participants with their projects. A Web site is used to disseminate teaching materials and facilitate communication among the participants after the conclusion of the institute.
Responding to NEH's Picturing America initiative, a Historically Black University offers a four-week institute for twenty-five school teachers on
“African-American Art: Meanings of Migration.” Drawing on the expertise of scholars in history, art history, and literature as well as a master teacher, the program focuses on three twentieth-century African-American artists, exploring how they respond to migration, a theme central to the American experience. The institute begins by considering Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series, featured in the posters provided to schools through
Picturing America Teachers are encouraged to relate the themes of this series to the study of American literature and history, including the work of Richard Wright, whose novel Black Boy follows its protagonist from South to North. Participants then turn to a painter not included in the poster series, Archibald Motley, whose paintings of African American urban life in Chicago complement the migration theme, and to historical studies of Black Chicago. The institute concludes with another artist featured in
Picturing America: Romare Bearden, whose restless aesthetic creativity and wide-ranging materials illuminate the theme of migration in African-American life from the rural South to the urban North, including Pittsburgh, where he developed skills as a young artist and which provided subject matter for later works. The examination of Bearden's career is enriched by reading selections from August Wilson's “Pittsburgh Cycle,” a series of plays depicting African American city life in the twentieth century.
A scholar of medieval and Renaissance Italy conducts a six-week school teachers' seminar on St. Francis of Assisi in Rome, Siena, and Assisi. Participants read and discuss the saint's writings and several early biographies, including that by Saint Bonaventure. They also study the depiction of St. Francis on church murals and paintings. In addition to exploring how writers and artists of the thirteenth century shaped Franciscan legend and tradition, participants study modern scholarship tracing the influence of St. Francis on European religious life and thought. Participants pursue individual projects exploring the many dimensions of the saint's legacy, including his views of nature, his early contribution to poetry in the Italian vernacular, his intellectual influence on major writers including Dante, and his redefinition of spirituality in Christian tradition.
An eminent scholar who has published work on the relationship between the visual and verbal arts conducts a six-week seminar for college and university faculty aimed at exploring the connections between works of Cervantes and the art and architecture of the Italian Renaissance. The starting point for establishing links is the classical notion of ekphrasis, or verbal descriptions of art as found in Pliny and Philostratus. In a similar vein, the seminar considers Cervantes' major prose works chronologically—La Galatea, Don Quixote, and Persiles y Sigismunda—and their characterizations of artists and their works, particularly Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian, Romano, and Botticelli. The museum of the large, private research university hosting the seminar organizes a special exhibition, The Painted Text: Picturing Narratives in European Art. The museum curator, a specialist in Italian Renaissance art, is available during the project for consultation. The university library also organizes an exhibition on related themes of pictorialism in literature from antiquity to the Renaissance. The seminar attracts faculty in art history, comparative literature, and early modern culture. Although the seminar uses translated texts and is conducted in English, preference is given to participants with a working knowledge of Spanish. In addition to pursuing a shared course of readings, the participants work on a research project or design a course that integrates the visual arts and the study of literature.
In response to NEH's We the People program, a small liberal arts college offers a two-week summer seminar for fifteen college and university teachers on the Roman statesman Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis—better known as Cato the Younger—and how historic accounts and legends about him shaped the thoughts and values of those who participated in the American Revolution. Cato, whose fiercely held republican values and stern morality brought him into conflict with Julius Caesar and helped precipitate the Roman Civil War, was frequently invoked during the early history of America. Participants study ancient sources in English translation that describe Cato, including Plutarch's Life of Cato the Younger, Lucan's Pharsalia, and Sallust's Conspiracy of Catiline; modern scholarship on the late Roman Republic; and Joseph Addison's 1713 play, Cato. The seminar director, a leading authority on the Founders' reception and interpretation of Classical antiquity, provides an anthology of texts that demonstrate the Founders' appreciation of Addison's Cato and their understanding of the historical Cato as an embodiment of virtues necessary for the new American republic. Participants represent a variety of disciplines in the humanities, including classical studies, American history, political science, and English literature, and their individual projects explore how Americans in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century understood, and, at times, sought to emulate this Roman hero. The seminar culminates with a roundtable symposium at which participants present their projects.
An institution with excellent research holdings on the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Islands offers a five-week institute for college and university teachers that examines the representations of Pacific Islanders in literature, art, and film. Visiting scholars from a variety of disciplines share their expertise on how indigenous peoples articulate their own identities. The institute is thematically organized in order to capture the diverse experiences of the population, which is spread over one-third of the surface area of the globe. The institute begins by considering the voyages of discovery and the historiography of early encounters between European voyagers and indigenous peoples. Participants then consider the theme of "rediscovery" through the use of indigenous resources and by working with a prominent scholar from one of the communities under study. Finally, participants learn about the efforts of indigenous peoples of the Pacific to represent their own traditional identity through narrative and art and through the recreation of their seafaring traditions of long-distance navigation. The institute attracts teachers of world history, comparative literature, and cultural studies who seek to develop a deeper understanding of indigenous cultures throughout the world.