Description
July 1st – 27th, 2012, The Library Company
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Director: Richard Newman, Rochester Institute of Technology
This dynamic four-week seminar will bring together fourteen school teachers and two graduate students in the summer of 2012 for close study of the abolitionist movement between the American Revolution and Civil War. To bring abolitionism alive, we will survey an exciting range of scholarly literature and primary source documents on abolitionism. We’ll discuss key themes -- including slave rebellions, the rise of black abolitionism, the prospects for inter-racial activism, women’s key role as abolitionists, the Underground Railroad, and Lincoln’s emancipation visions during the Civil War era, among others -- and talk about teaching strategies, films and websites that deal with abolitionism as a historical topic. The seminar will also welcome several terrific guest scholars, including Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Scott Hancock, Stacey Robertson, and James Brewer Stewart, each of whom will discuss cutting edge research in the field. Finally, we’ve planned several fieldtrips to some famous abolitionist sites in the greater Philadelphia area, including black abolitionist Richard Allen’s Mother Bethel AME Church, Underground Railroad Sites near Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, and a black soldier’s cemetery in the town of Gettysburg. We hope seminar the seminar is both engaging and exciting.
For more detailed information, please go to the Director’s Letter (Coming Soon).