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Instructional Guides
Divining America: Religion in American History
Nature Transformed: The Environment in American History



An Interactive Curriculum Enrichment Service for Teachers

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  Divining America: Religion in American History
  Nature Transformed: The Environment in American History
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TeacherServe® is a curriculum enrichment service offering teachers practical help in planning courses and presenting rigorous subject matter to students. It is designed to deepen course content by providing convenient access to scholarship tailored to classroom use. TeacherServe consists of a series of instructional guides on important topics in the humanities on the secondary level. Each guide provides commentary along with instructional tools.

Divining America: Religion in American History is designed to help teachers of American history bring their students to a greater understanding of the role religion has played in the development of the United States. It is based on the fact that American history and religion intersect importantly at various points—the Puritan migration to New England, for example, abolition, or the Civil Rights Movement. Divining America illuminates these intersections, for to understand such events fully, students must acquire some appreciation of their religious dimensions.

Nature Transformed: The Environment in American History explores the relationship between the ways men and women have thought about their surroundings and the ways they have acted toward them. It asks how Native Americans conceptualized nature and saw themselves in it and how they lived and are now living upon the land. It studies the shifts in perception that transformed nature from wilderness to ecosystem and considers how these transformations affected the forests, plains, and deserts of North America. Nature Transformed enables teachers to show their students how the forces that shaped the American landscape also shaped the American past.

The National Humanities Center is the country's only independent institute for advanced study in the humanities. A private, nonprofit institution, the Center exists to encourage excellent scholarship and to affirm the importance of the humanities in American society. The National Humanities Center promotes excellence in scholarship; strengthens instruction in colleges, universities, and schools; and broadens public understanding of the humanities and their role in society.






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Revised: January 2006
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