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Education Programs

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How to Think Like a Geographer

What does it mean to think geographically? How do we foster geoliteracy in classrooms? In this podcast, Edward Kinman, professor of geography at Longwood University, and Megan Webster, Social Studies Department Chair at J. J. Pearce High School in Richardson, Texas, discuss how geography helps students understand the world more fully. Specifically, they discuss the ways that geography helps students understand interconnected systems—natural, cultural, economic, technological—issues of scale, and relationships between the local and the global.

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How to Think Like a Political Scientist

Fake news. Political polls. Twitter. Big data. Institutional mistrust. Civic responsibility. How do learners sort through it all? In this podcast, Daniel Palazzolo, professor of political science at the University of Richmond, and Patrick Touart, Social Studies Department Chairman at Tunstall High School in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, compare notes on how students make sense—or don’t make sense—of political science in the 21st century.

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National Humanities Center Receives NEH Grant to Improve Teaching about the Vietnam War

The National Humanities Center has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in support of a new program designed to improve teaching about the Vietnam War. The grant, totaling $158,283, will help fund a two-week, interdisciplinary institute for high school teachers to be held at the NHC next summer. The summer institute is one of several initiatives currently underway at the National Humanities Center to promote a deeper understanding of this complex period in Cold War-era history.

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David Christian, “Big History: Between Nothing and Everything”

Since the early modern era, history has been largely viewed through an anthropocentric lens, skewing towards the involvement of humans. David Christian (NHC Fellow 2006-07) flips this narrative by zooming out to see history—specifically, Big History—on a larger scale, measured by geological and cosmological time. Bringing together fields as seemingly disparate as cosmology, anthropology, and geology, Big History offers what Christian calls “a unifying origin story” that explains our origin and place in the universe, bridging the humanities with the social sciences.

Weaver Academy

Samantha Shires: “Piloting Humanities Moments at Weaver Academy”

The Humanities Moments pilot project at Weaver Academy in Greensboro, North Carolina introduces high school students to the role the humanities play in their lives. The value of the project is visible across the entire school from increasing self-understanding among students and bridging the gap between STEM and arts educators to teaching life preparedness and vital skills like critical thinking and empathy needed beyond high school.

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Spring 2017 America in Class® Webinars to Feature Sessions on Islam in America, John F. Kennedy, the Poetry of Rita Dove, More

The National Humanities Center has announced its program of spring 2017 professional development webinars for humanities teachers covering a wide range of topics including the cultural history of Islam in America, television and the presidency of John F. Kennedy, understanding the Black Lives Matter movement in its historical context, the poetry of Pulitzer Prize winner Rita Dove, and cultivating philosophical thinking with students.

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National Humanities Center to Partner with Vietnam National University to Develop Digital Learning Resources

The NHC will partner with Vietnam National University in developing digital instructional resources that allow for a deeper understanding of the American Vietnamese War. This initiative, supported by a $175,000 grant from the Fostering Innovation through Research, Science, and Technology Project for Vietnam, will bring together a team of Vietnamese and American educators, scholars, and technology experts to create digital tools that examine the political, social, cultural, economic, and historical complexities surrounding the conflict.

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NEH-Funded Program for Veterans in Eastern NC Seeks Participants

The National Humanities Center and the Durham Veteran Affairs Health Care System are seeking participants for a new program for military Veterans and their families in eastern North Carolina. “Reading Our Stories: Exploring the Veteran’s Experience through Literature,” will give Veterans an opportunity to more deeply reflect on their service—what it means to them and to the country—by examining and discussing literary texts. Groups will meet in Raleigh, Durham, and Greenville beginning in January 2017.

GIS

Chris Bunin, "Mapping the American Experience"

The use of geospatial technologies allows the interactions of place, space, time, and scale to be more obvious to teachers and students. Often there is an over-emphasis on the chronology of historical events without a strong consideration for their connections to geography. Geospatial technologies allow students to raise the critical ability to answer not only the important question of “where?” but also “why there?” With an emphasis on inquiry-based teaching and learning, Chris Bunin provides insights on the ways that GIS tools contribute to a deeper understanding of the humanities.

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John Corrigan, “The Spatial Humanities”

In recent years, historians, literary theorists, archaeologists, geographers and others have been exploring space—both physical and metaphorical—and the ways that it shapes, and is shaped by, us. Host Richard Schramm talks with John Corrigan about “the spatial humanities,” a turn in academic research that brings together scholars from diverse fields, using new digital tools to better understand how we live in our spaces and how those spaces influence economics, politics, and culture.