During the summer of 2009, project leadership will plan and recruit the nominated teachers. Then in the fall/spring 2009-10 colloquium, participants will study the interaction of political, cultural, and economic exchanges among Native Americans, British, Spanish, and French. Special emphasis will be placed on Native American culture in the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri River valleys. In the summer of 2010, participants will take a five-day, field-study trip during which the fellows will follow the Santa Fe Trail from Missouri to New Mexico.
This year will emphasize the importance of political theory that shaped America’s national development. Teachers will study the documents that contributed to the ideas shared by Europeans and Anglo-Americans about good government and individual liberties. This year will answer the questions: How did these documents come into being? What were the issues faced by the Founding Fathers in the writing of the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights? What was the influence on the Midwest of the founding documents of our nation (Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights)? The culminating summer institute will take the participants to Philadelphia, the cradle of early US democratic ideals, to visit Washington’s Crossing of the Delaware, Battle of Trenton, and Princeton. They will also visit David Library of the American Revolution, Valley Forge, the National Constitutional Center, and take Poor Richard’s Walking Tour. Participants will analyze the arguments that colonists made in their debates with the mother country and explore the intricate relationship between theory and practice in developing and extending our constitutional form of government to an ever-enlarging territory.
During this year, fellows will explore the maturing of our nation and America’s attempts to decide what liberty and freedom really mean. This year’s study will analyze the antebellum reform impulse, the trial of civil war, and finally attempts at reconstructing our nation. By looking at Missouri, from the Mormon Wars through Reconstruction, participants can explore large questions on a smaller stage. They will answer the questions: What role did slavery have in Missouri? How have ethnic groups shaped the culture of the Midwest? The summer institute will take the group to Gettysburg and other Civil War battlefields where they will better feel the true impact that Civil War can have on a nation. Significant sites in this area will include Harper’s Ferry, Little Round Top, Devil’s Den, Culp’s Hill, and Cemetery Hill, and Antietam.
The year’s study will highlight the consolidation of the national economy; the growth of cities, immigration, and labor movements; the reaction of populist and progressive reformers to a changing world: Indian Wars, westward expansion, and labor unrest. Documents will be researched and used to teach American and regional history. Fellows will contrast American liberal democracy with totalitarian regimes the United States opposed during the early 20th century and the effects these confrontations had on foreign and domestic policies. They will then explore World War I and the subsequent concept of Wilsonian international liberalism. The summer institute will travel to Chicago where the effects of labor movements and the growth of cities can be seen first hand.
This year will focus on the rise of the United States as a great world power while simultaneously struggling to solve the problems related to its rapid growth and development. Fellows will research how quickly the United States became engaged in a bitter confrontation with the Soviet Union—the Cold War. They will explore two phases of the Cold War and then the United States’ confrontation with militant Islamists, along with the effects on domestic policies. The Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, and Watergate are all important topics of this era to explore. The group will travel to Washington, D.C. to visit the memorials, the National Archives, the Smithsonians, Library of Congress, and the Holocaust Museum.