ASHP Newsletter: September 2019
July 2020 NEH Summer Institute on Visual Culture of the American Civil War and Its Aftermath
ASHP has been awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to host a two-week institute for college and university faculty in July 2020 on the visual media of the American Civil War and its aftermath. The institute (in its fifth iteration) will expand study on the ways the war was recorded and remembered through an array of visual media -- including the fine arts, photography, cartoons, prints -- and a range of “ephemeral” pictorial items and publications. Institute participants will work with leading scholars in the field and take part in hands-on workshops in local museums and archives. Sessions will explore photography and slavery; painting the war; illustrated journalism; Reconstruction; American Indian resistance during the war; emancipation; and memorialization and memory, among others. Institute activities will introduce the rich body of scholarship related to Civil War and postwar era visual culture, encourage further research in the field, and assist participants in developing approaches that use visual evidence to enhance teaching and learning the history of the Civil War era.
Check back later this fall to apply!
ASHP Awarded Ford Foundation Grant to Develop Who Built America? The Open Educational Resource
We are pleased to announce that the office of the President of the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice has awarded ASHP a grant of $150,000 for Who Built America? The Open Educational Resource (WBA? OER). The grant will be used to clear rights for twentieth- and twenty-first century visual, audio, and text primary sources; develop interactive maps and charts; and supplement the National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities grant we received for the project in January 2019.
The Ford Foundation supported the Who Built America? project at its origin, and this grant will allow the textbook and rich teaching materials to reach a broad international public including trade unions, community-based activists, museums, and other organizations that have used ASHP’s educational materials for the past 38 years.
Who Built America? Documentaries Now Streaming!
All ten of our award-winning documentaries are now available to stream for free and with closed-captioning. These accessible and exciting 30-minute programs explore the central role of working women and men in U.S. history, and have withstood the test of time by continuing to engage students in middle school through college level classes. Each documentary has a downloadable Viewer’s Guide that is written for student readers. It introduces the main topics, events, and composite characters that help to dramatize the historical themes in many of the programs. The streaming pages also help facilitate active-viewing strategies in the classroom by offering links to specific topics and chapters within each documentary.
Mission US Receives a "Teacher’s Choice Award for the Classroom"
We are pleased to announce that the Mission US series has been selected as a 2020 “Teacher’s Choice Award for the Classroom” by The Education Center Media Group. For over 45 years, The Education Center has been bringing influential teachers and organizations together through a host of pedagogical resources and materials. The "Teacher’s Choice Awards" are a prestigious collection of innovative classroom-tested products recommended by teachers currently in the field. The 2020 awards were announced on September 1 and will be available to view on their website later this fall.
As lead historical content developers on all five completed and two future Mission US games, ASHP is honored that Mission US continues to garner praise and recommendations by teachers, parents, and educational organizations.
The Mission US series of free online interactive games for US history classrooms is produced in collaboration with public television station WNET/Thirteen and game designer Electric Funstuff.
Check out ASHP Podcast Number 85
Did you know that American Social History Project Podcast (ASHP Podcast) has published over eighty episodes? With topics ranging from slavery and anti-slavery imagery to women’s history and women’s activism, and to border, immigration and citizenship, ASHP Podcast has presented subjects of interest to teachers and the public.
Our podcast is drawn from ASHP’s public seminars and professional development programs with scholars, activists, and educators working in social and public history. In the latest podcast, humanities scholar Maryanne Trasciatti (Hofstra University) shares the work of the Remembering the Triangle Fire Coalition, which is leading the effort to build a public art memorial to the 146 victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911. The episode was recorded at ASHP’s public seminar, “Who Decides? The History and Future of Monument Creation in New York City,” held at the CUNY Graduate Center.
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