CALL FOR APPLICATIONS
2008 LANDMARKS OF AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE
SUMMER INSTITUTES

The Embassy of the United States is pleased to announce a call for applications for a unique summer institute program: Landmarks of American History and Culture. The embassy is now collecting applications from candidates interested in innovative, experiential one-week seminars that will run in July and August 2008.  Prospective participants should be prepared to be in the U.S. for a minimum of ten days (depending on length and location of the workshop) during this period.  The programs will include three-day orientations in Washington, D.C. prior to the five-seven days spent at one of the workshops listed below (including travel days to and from the workshop locations).

This intensive seminar program is fully funded by the Department of State and is designed for secondary-school educators in civics, social studies, world and/or U.S. history, geography, and journalism.  Journalists, TV reporters, and directors of historical and cultural organizations also are encouraged to apply.

Program description: 

The program will present the opportunity for international visitors to actively participate in the 2008 Landmarks of American History and Culture workshops. The summer institutes program will engage international participants in intensive study and discussion of important topics in American history and culture. These one-week academies will give participants direct experiences in the interpretation of significant historical sites and the use of archival and other primary historical evidence. Landmarks workshops present exemplary scholarship on a specific landmark or related cluster of landmarks, enabling participants to gain a sense of the importance of historical places, to make connections between what they learn in the workshop and what they teach, and to develop enhanced teaching materials for their classrooms.

The summer institutes provide a unique intercultural experience for both international professionals teaching humanities, and their American counterparts, to interact as they learn about U.S. history and culture.  The international participants will be joining secondary-school teachers from the U.S. during this program. 

Applicants can choose from among the following workshops:

Shaping the Constitution: a view from Mount Vernon 1783-1789

During the period 1783-1789, George Washington’s plantation—Mount Vernon—became nothing less than an intellectual crossroads for political ideas that helped to shape the U.S. constitution.  Each day of the program will begin with an overview of selected individuals who visited Mount Vernon during the 1780s.  Lectures and discussions will emphasize the central themes of the founding era that were discussed by these Mount Vernon visitors: republican government, equality, liberty, slavery, limited government, federalism, commerce, and freedom of religion. The lectures and your participation in the discussions will broaden not only your understanding of the founding period but also of American political culture in general. 
Workshop will be held July 28 – August 1, 2008.
Location: Mount Vernon, Alexandria, Virginia.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the World Crisis, 1933-1945: Roosevelt and
Hyde Park

Undertaken from the vantage point of FDR’s beloved Hyde Park, this week-long workshop will offer participants a unique perspective on Roosevelt’s response to the Great Depression and World War II, with a special emphasis on how FDR’s relationship to his home community influenced his thinking about national policy and America’s role in the world. 
Workshop will be held July 20 – 25, 2008. 
Locations: Hyde Park, New York, and Marist College, Poughkeepsie, New York.

The Problem of the Color Line: Atlanta Landmarks and Civil-Rights History

This workshop’s goals are: to use historic sites related to civil-rights events in Atlanta to trace the history of the color line in 20th century American history; to read the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and to listen to the voices of civil-rights protestors at associated sites in Atlanta; and to provide participants with the opportunity to develop curriculum that makes use of historic landmarks in Atlanta and related historic documents to teach the history of the color line and the civil rights movement in 20th century American history. 
Workshop will be held July 20 – 26, 2008.
Location: Atlanta, Georgia

A Revolution in Government: Philadelphia, American Independence, and the Constitution, 1765-1791

Philadelphia, the birthplace of American democracy, was the nation’s leading metropolis in the era of the American Revolution. History in Philadelphia is something you can walk through. Participants will take walking tours and field trips throughout Independence National Historical Park. Carpenters’ Hall, the site of the First Continental Congress, and Independence Hall, birthplace of both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, are among the famous landmarks waiting to be explored. So are less well-known sites such as the Graff House, where Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, and the place where Benjamin Franklin’s home and courtyard once stood. Seminars will be conducted by leading American historians.
Workshop will be held July 21 – 25, 2008.
Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Women's Suffrage on the Western Frontier

The workshop presents participants with the opportunity to imagine life in South Pass City in 1869, a small gold-mining town. This was the residence for both the legislator who introduced the new Wyoming Territory’s women’s suffrage bill and for the first woman justice of the peace in the U.S., Esther Hobart Morris. Morris and her involvement in Wyoming’s women’s suffrage effort hold a central place in our historical inquiry about women’s suffrage on the western frontier. Preserved as a state historic site, the remote location appears much the same today as it was in 1869, near South Pass National Historic Landmark, the primary route on the Oregon Trail, where almost 500,000 people passed through a 150-mile break in the Rocky Mountains. The central question the workshop will address is, “why did the west embrace political equality for women long before the east?”
Workshop held July 27 – August 1, 2008.
Locations: University of Wyoming, Laramie and Lander, Wyoming.

Inventing America: Lowell and the Industrial Revolution

The inventing America workshop combines scholarly presentations with on-site investigations of the canals, mills, worker housing, and exhibits of Lowell National Historical Park and of other sites in Lowell's historic district. In 1978, Congress created Lowell National Historical Park, recognizing that certain sites and structures in Lowell, Massachusetts, historically and culturally the most significant planned industrial city in the United States, symbolize in physical form the industrial revolution. Founded by Boston merchants in the 1820s, Lowell quickly emerged as the foremost industrial city in the United States. These early industrial capitalists, aided by skilled mechanics, borrowed from and improved upon British engineering and manufacturing technology, first on the Charles River in Waltham, Massachusetts, and later on a far larger scale in Lowell, where they created a massive water-powered textile center on the Merrimack River.
Workshop held July 27 – August 1, 2008. 
Locations: various sites in Concord, Massachusetts.

All participants in the 2008 summer institutes must be comfortable with cross-cultural dynamics and interested in close interaction with other humanities professionals from a multiplicity of diverse countries and cultures. They will have a chance to develop their knowledge of U.S. history and culture, share similarities and differences of their home country and U.S. society, and will follow-up with additional programming in their home country to reach a wider audience.

All applicants should demonstrate strong interest in contributing to a related area of the humanities in their respective organizations and must be fluent in English. While they will not be expected to write extensively in the English language, they must have sufficient comfort with oral and written English to fully participate.

Upon program completion and return to home country, participants may be requested to organize a lecture or other public program at which the participant can describe the program and his or her experience in the U.S. and outcomes from participating in the workshops.

Applications should include:
1.) a C.V. or résumé outlining professional responsibilities;
2.) a list of personal interests;
3.) a statement detailing for which program the applicant wishes to apply and an explanation about how the particular program is relevant to his or her work;
4.) any research conducted on relevant topics

The statement of interest will be particularly important in evaluating candidates in this competitive offering.
 
Deadline for receiving applications: April 18, 2008
Interviews will be held on April 23, 2008 in the U.S. Embassy in Sofia. Only short-listed applicants will be contacted.

Please email your applications to pdbulgaria@gmail.com