Location
June 30 - July 26, 2013, The Library Company of Philadelphia
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Director: Richard Newman, Rochester Institute of Technology
Our seminar will be held in a city that served as one of the abolition movement’s main theaters of operation between the Revolutionary era and Civil War. This should make our studies really come alive! Moreover, seminar meetings will take place at the nation’s oldest lending library and a leading repository of abolitionist documents, the Library Company of Philadelphia:
http://www.librarycompany.org/
Formal seminar meetings will be held at The Library Company’s Cassatt House, a beautifully renovated townhouse in the heart of Center City Philadelphia. We will meet Monday through Thursday, 9-12 and 1:30-2:30 pm. Fridays (with the exception of Week Four) will be reserved for field trips and participants’ research and reading. Our daily morning sessions will be dedicated to debate and discussion of scholarly readings. Afternoons will be dedicated to preparation in the Library Company’s archives and the discussion of primary source documents relating to abolitionism. You should have plenty of time for reading, reflection, and research (not to mention tours around Philadelphia!).
Indeed, you will have ample opportunities each week to research abolitionism in the Library Company’s unsurpassed archives, particularly the “Afro-Americana Collection” of materials on black freedom struggles during the 18th and 19th centuries, and to work on your seminar project, which will consist of a document discussion on a selected afternoon (in which you will lead a 30-minute discussion of a document you have found and researched in the archives) and preparation of a sample unit you plan to create during the school year (which you can present in written form, no longer than five pages). I will be available for office hours during weekday afternoons to discuss everything from daily readings to your projects.
To get a glimpse of the treasures that await you in the Afro Americana Collection, please visit the following web-pages:
http://www.librarycompany.org/collections/afroam.htm
http://www.librarycompany.org/Cassey/AfroAm.htm