English-speaking writers of African descent. Equiano’s autobiography is universally accepted as the fundamental text in the genre of the slave narrative. Excerpts from the book now appear in every anthology and on any website covering American, African-American, British, and Caribbean history and literature of the eighteenth century.
became convinced that they could preserve their liberties only by overthrowing British rule, they drew upon this experience to unite in a new form of political protest.
favorite. His heavy reliance on rhyme, for which his contemporaries labeled him “the jingle man,” makes his poems appealing curiosities to students, and his tales, with their demented narrators, are an endless source of cheap thrills. But is there more to Poe than sound and fright? What can he tell us about nineteenth century American culture, and how can the context in which he wrote illuminate his art?
brought the literary avant-garde to mass popular audiences. In the process he defined an enduring cultural style and shaped our understanding of World War I as well as the modern world it seemed to epitomize. Examining Hemingway’s artistic influences and the historical context of In Our Time, we will try to understand why this slim volume turned out to have such a large impact.
National Humanities Center Professional Development Seminars
Announcing a Special Program for California Teachers!
Through a partnership with the California Department of Education, the National Humanities Center (NHC) is pleased to offer California educators free registration in a series of live, online professional development seminars for history, literature, and humanities teachers. These interactive programs offer educators:
- Increased content knowledge
- New teaching resources
- Fresh instructional approaches
Led by distinguished scholars, the seminars explore historical documents, literary texts, and images to demonstrate and support teaching with primary sources. Seminar materials are free, online, and available on-demand.
NHC online seminars, Toolbox Library, and TeacherServe® resources align with Partnership for 21st Century Skills to improve student learning. Educators using primary sources help students:
- develop critical thinking and improve problem solving skills
- analyze and evaluate evidence, arguments, claims and beliefs
- synthesize and make connections between information and arguments
Each National Humanities Center seminar provides three hours of professional development. Five NHC seminars will provide one credit, or a variety of seminars and other programs may be combined to total fifteen hours.
When registering use the promotional code: CSUC
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National Humanities Center ~ Schedule of Courses |
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Thur., Oct 4 Use promo code: CSUC |
Slavery in the Atlantic World
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James Sweet
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Tues., Oct 9 Use Promo Code: CSUC |
Teaching the Slave Narrative: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah EquianoOver the past thirty-five years, historians, literary critics, and the general public have come to recognize the author of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself as one of the most accomplished |
Vincent Carretta |
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Thurs., Oct 10 Use Promo Code: CSUC |
Teaching The Autobiography of Benjamin FranklinBenjamin Franklin’s Autobiography stands near the headwaters of American literature and culture. The quintessential rags-to-riches story, the first in a seemingly endless line of self-help books, a guide to the deliberate creation of a public image, the Autobiography describes the emergence of an archetypal American. Franklin was the only Founder to put his life successfully on paper. |
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Thues., Oct 19 Use Promo Code: CSUC |
Consumer Politics in the American RevolutionThe men and women who made the American Revolution were united as consumers before they came together as rebels. Through the mid-1700s, as the wealth of the colonies increased, Americans from Portsmouth to Savannah bought the same imported goods. Their shared desire for and dependence upon British cloth, ceramics, tea, and other items created a common experience. When the colonists |
Timothy H. Breen |
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Tues., Oct 23 4:00-5:30 pm Pacific Use Promo Code: CSUC |
Deism and the Founding of the United StatesDuring the 17th and 18th centuries, many “freethinking” Europeans embraced Deism, a theology that subjected religious truth to the authority of human reason. In colonial America, Deism found few adherents, but those who were attracted to it tended to be wealthy and educated, leaders in colonial society and politics. Today, debate swirls around the role Deism played in the founding of the nation. What was this “religion of nature”? How can we explain it to students? Who among the Founders were Deists? What influence did Deism have on the culture of the new nation? |
Ryan K. Smith |
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Thur., Oct 25 Use Promo Code: CSUC |
The Work of SlaveryNo matter when it was done, from the colonial period through the Civil War, or where it was done, from New England to Georgia, slave labor was hard, often dangerous work. Yet in North America the tasks slaves performed and the amount of control they exercised over them varied greatly. Slaves built boats, crafted chairs, cooked meals, forged iron, steered ships, washed clothes, and plowed fields. Some worked in gangs under the watchful eye and ready whip of an overseer, while others worked largely on their own with little supervision. Still others, hired out, worked much as free labor did. How did work shape the lives of the enslaved? What do the varying degrees of supervision — and varying degrees of freedom tell us about the position of slaves in American society and their relations with their owners? |
Heather Williams |
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Thur., Nov 1 Use Promo Code: CSUC |
Teaching Poe’s “The Raven” in ContextEdgar Allan Poe is a perennial classroom |
Eliza Richards
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Thur., Nov 8 Use Promo Code: CSUC |
Teaching Flannery O’ConnorFlannery O’Connor’s stories have retained their power to intrigue, to perplex, and to instruct readers in both the art of storytelling and the mysteries of the spirit. Through close reading of “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” written early in her career, and “Revelation,” written shortly before her death, we will explore two of her most important concepts, the artistic technique of “the Grotesque” and the religious principle of Grace. |
Professor of English, Emerita, North Carolina State University National Humanities Center Fellow |
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Thur., Nov 15 Use Promo Code: CSUC |
Teaching “Bartleby, the Scrivener“I would prefer not to.” With those words Bartleby, Herman Melville’s New York law-copyist, turns himself into one of the most enigmatic and infuriating characters in all of American literature. With them he also disrupts the staid, ordered life of his employer. And with them, too, he withdraws from life until he ends his days curled up against a wall in a prison aptly named the Tombs. What does “Bartleby, the Scrivener” tell us about Melville’s genius? What does it tell us about antebellum America, a society in which the impersonal values of laissez-faire capitalism clashed with the religious impulse to care for and about others? |
Andrew Delbanco |
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Thur., Nov 29 Use Promo Code: CSUC |
Art and American Identity: 1670-1789In 1690, to what extent were the arts and material culture of the British Atlantic colonies “American”? To what extent were they “American” by 1789? What major factors defined the evolution in American arts and material culture in this period? To what extent did this evolution reflect the changing self-image of Americans? |
Associate Professor, American Art and Material Culture and Director of American Studies, University of Virginia |
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Tues., Dec 4 Use Promo Code: CSUC |
Winslow Homer’s Civil War ArtThe unprecedented scale of the U.S. Civil War, both in its massive mobilization and in its terrible human cost, presented a tremendous challenge to visual artists who had never experienced anything like this before and had few if any visual models to imitate. Winslow Homer was perhaps the most important and innovative “delineator” of the war. Working initially as an illustrator for Harper’s Weekly, he started by producing conventional images of heroic battle but soon developed a new vocabulary for visualizing the strange new realities of modern warfare. |
Kirk Savage Professor of Art History, The University of Pittsburgh |
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Thur., Dec 13 Use Promo Code: CSUC |
Teaching In Our Time in Our TimeErnest Hemingway’s In Our Time helped to create the idiom of modernist literature, which would go on to become the predominant literary aesthetic of the 20th century. Emerging from the world of the Parisian little magazines, Hemingway |
Sean McCann Professor of English, Wesleyan University National Humanities Center Fellow |
Receive Seminar Updates
If you would like to receive notices about new online seminars as they become available, please join our mailing list and select the “National Humanities Center” interest list.
Registration & Course Information
To register, visit the NHC Web site
and complete the online registration form. Prior to a seminar, registered teachers will receive a link to a web page which includes:
- Instructions to access the online classroom
- Assigned readings
After the seminar, the audio recording and presentation are available for listening, viewing, and downloading.
Sample: The Idea of Progress in 19th-Century America
Earn Credits for National Humanities Center Seminars!
National Humanities Center seminars have been vetted and pre-approved by Trinity County Office of Education as meeting the requirements for university credit. Completion of five National Humanities Center seminars will provide one credit.
If you are interested in receiving credits from CSU, Chico, just follow a few easy steps!
