Abolitionism Archives | Page 3 of 6 | National Humanities Center

Abolitionism

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Teaching Chaucer

The reasons why someone would want to study Chaucer are widely known. He is, after all, celebrated as the “father of English literature,” famous for putting English literary culture on an equal footing with its continental European competitors. His poetry contains multitudes; it is at turns spiritual and earthy, learned and colloquial, earnest and lighthearted. Generations of students have come to love Chaucer’s sly humor, refreshing lack of orthodoxy, and novel framing of humanity’s perennial questions and quandaries. But his poetry presents significant challenges for the beginning reader, as well as the instructor tasked with teaching it for the first time. His fourteenth-century English differs considerably from our own. He assumes a deep knowledge of classical and biblical traditions. And he relies upon knowledge of medieval genres and social constructions that only those with special training will know.

This webinar aims to equip instructors with tools and assignments to build bridges between what is unfamiliar in Chaucer and our students’ areas of expertise (e.g., modern television and film genres). By the end of the seminar, participants will have both a deeper knowledge of Chaucer and his poetry and concrete examples of exercises and approaches for teaching his poetry.

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Focus On “What is Up to You”: The Stoics on How to Be Happier, Develop Your Character, and Live a Good Life

The Stoics were a school of philosophy, founded over 2000 years ago in ancient Athens. Their most famous argument was that the only thing that mattered to live a good life was to have a good character. But what is a good character? And how do we develop one, according to the Stoics? Join us to learn about Stoic strategies for self-transformation, including how to have a healthier relationship with your emotions, experience less anxiety, and have a clearer perspective on what is truly important. This discussion will focus on the Stoic curriculum for "moral education," or their three-step process for developing the character of their students.

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Myth-Busting Medieval Disability

The topic of disability heritage rarely receives the attention that it deserves, despite the fact that people with disabilities are integral to every society and every time period. The discomfort many feel at engaging with disability—and, further, with disability studies—stems from long-standing stigma and from a fear of understanding that any person at any time may experience disability, either themselves or through someone close to them. Emphasizing disability heritage helps to alleviate this stigma and fear, affecting how people with disabilities are treated and understood today. Popular myths about disability in the Middle Ages in particular tend to be rather grim, assuming that people with disabilities were always treated with disdain if not outright violence. While these experiences certainly existed, the reality of medieval disability is far more complex and dynamic.

This webinar will help educators navigate preconceptions about medieval disability and illuminate the heritage of disability. By the end, educators will be able to teach about disability heritage using examples of individuals with disabilities, their experiences, and how they were treated in the past; how the field of disability studies applies to the Middle Ages; and how historical disability helps us understand and discuss modern disability.

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Exploring Women and Girls of African-Descent in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Speculative Fiction

Are you familiar with the fanfare the film Black Panther garnered in 2018? Heralded as Marvel's highest grossing film at the time, some were amazed that a majority cast of African-descended content-creators—behind and on the screen—could have such appeal. Arguably, Black Panther spoke to a trend in popular, American film/streaming videos, whereby more roles and storylines exist for people of African descent. Fast-forward to Black Panther’s sequel, Wakanda Forever (2022), and another trend is present: attention to the experiences or perspective of Black females.

For this webinar, we will contemplate visual and written texts that focus on African-descended women and girls, particularly in speculative fiction. Such speculative fiction heroes can be found in comics and graphic novels, adolescent fiction, canonical literature, and moving images. Even as you read this description, do characters come to mind? What about writers, directors, producers, along with the artists drawing the images, designing the clothes/sets, etc.? This seminar will introduce you to key people, themes, and texts. Together, we will query these gendered and culturally nuanced images, contemplating what these depictions can avail our students as we prepare them to lead and shape the rest of the twenty-first century.

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F.B. Eyes on Langston Hughes and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. King’s iconic refrain “I Have a Dream” was actually first delivered in Rocky Mount, NC, nine months before the March on Washington in 1963. By listening to this long lost reel-to-reel audio tape from November of 1962, we discover how this phrase actually has its origins in the poetry of Langston Hughes (1901–67). While Hughes was harassed by the FBI from as early as 1941, King’s every movement was traced, photographed, recorded, and even filmed by J. Edgar Hoover’s agency.

This webinar focuses on the full array of archival documents that connect these two American icons. In listening to rare audio, seeing poetry drafts, and examining their full correspondence, educators will discover how the FBI’s surveillance of Dr. King explains why the subversive poet’s ideas had to be concealed within so many more of King’s most famous addresses. Join us as we learn how to incorporate this new knowledge into lessons that bridge the history of the civil rights movement to the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance. By the end of this webinar, teachers will be inspired to construct and refine both lessons and units that re-contextualize each of these two seminal eras in American History.

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In The Shadow of Civil Rights: The African American Experience in New York City in the 1980s

This webinar will provide a glimpse into the Black experience in New York City from the late 1970s to early 1990s by connecting a few of the key political and cultural events of the era, such as the youth rebellion in the South Bronx and the emergence of anti-apartheid student activism at Columbia University, to the evolution and implementation of public policies that changed Black lives and Black communities forever, such as those that undergird the War on Drugs and the city’s response to the HIV/AIDS crisis. The aim is to lay the groundwork for a better understanding of the Black experience in the 1980s, which is essential to accurately assessing the successes and shortcomings of the civil rights movement and to properly understanding racial fault lines in America today.

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Slave Voyages: Engaging the Digital in Education

The Transatlantic Slave Trade was the largest forced migration in human history, wherein an estimated 12.5 million Africans were sold into bondage. Unfortunately, the slave trade often only receives limited coverage in either school curricula or in public memory, inhibiting students’ understanding of this episode in history. Within the United States, school history textbooks generally provide information about the slave trade that is overly simplistic, misleading, or inaccurate, resulting in a decontextualized presentation of the history of the trade.

Since its initial web launch in 2008, Slave Voyages database (now maintained by the Slave Voyages Consortium) has served as an invaluable digital resource for historians, genealogists, and particularly, teachers at various grade levels who have incorporated information into their classrooms and lessons. The site has not only made available tens of thousands of records on the trade, but also visualizations that can augment our understanding of human trafficking. This webinar will engage participants in the historical connections of the slave trade and the African Diaspora, including linkages with different African regions from where enslaved Africans were taken.