Primary Sources: Workshops in American History - The Lowell System: Women in a New Industrial Society
In the earliest days of American industry, the Boston Manufacturing Company created an innovative, single-location manufacturing enterprise at Lowell, Massachusetts, that depended on the recruitment of women millworkers. Using primary source documents, you can examine the changing face of gender, class, and labor in the 1830s and 1840s through the lens of the Lowell System and determine if Lowell was a real opportunity for working women or a dead end.
Primary Sources: Workshops in American History - Concerning Emancipation: Who Freed the Slaves?
This workshop examines the complex issues surrounding the end of slavery in the United States. It addresses President Lincoln's attitudes and actions before and during the Civil War and the role of the enslaved in attaining their own emancipation. Using primary source documents, you can deepen your understanding of the influences on Lincoln and the different forces at work that contributed to the end of slavery.
Primary Sources: Workshops in American History - Cans, Coal, and Corporations: The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition
This workshop investigates the new American vision that resulted from the explosion of interstate transportation and industrial technology in the second half of the Nineteenth century. Drawing on essays written to celebrate the Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, you can reflect on this new perspective, both cosmopolitan and expansionist, and its implications for the future.
Primary Sources: Workshops in American History - The Census: Who We Think We Are
Beginning in 1790 and every ten years since, American citizens have gotten a new view of who they are through the census that is mandated by the U.S. Constitution. Reformulated racial and ethnic categories reflect both policy priorities and changes in how we think about ourselves and how the government allocates resources. In this workshop, you can explore your identity through historic census forms and analyze recent data to formulate spending priorities for a sample community.
Primary Sources: Workshops in American History - Disease and History: Typhoid Mary and the Search for Perfect Control
This workshop looks at the history of infectious disease in America -- particularly typhoid, diphtheria, and polio -- and their "conquest" by medical research and public health regulation. With the aid of contemporary medical journal articles and New York City health records, the onscreen participants investigate the medical and civil liberties issues exemplified by the case of "Typhoid Mary" Mallon. Facing off as either Board of Health officials or friends of Mary Mallon, workshop participants debate the typhoid carrier's fate.
Primary Sources: Workshops in American History - Korea and the Cold War: A Case Study
This workshop looks at the first use of military force under the Truman Doctrine, and the Korean War as the first practical manifestation of America's Cold War "containment" policy. Using works by George Kennan and Walter Lippman, treaties, and the texts of the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine, the onscreen participants take on the roles of major military, political, and strategic players at a mock Senate hearing to decide whether to intervene in Korea in 1950.
Democracy in America: Citizenship - Making Government Work
This course introduces basic concepts of government, politics, and citizenship. It explores the tension between maintaining order and preserving freedoms, the essential role of politics in addressing the will of the people, and the need for citizens to participate in order to make democracy work.
Democracy in America: The Constitution - Fixed or Flexible?
This course examines the search for balance between the original Constitution and the need to interpret and adjust it to meet the needs of changing times. It explains the original Jeffersonian-Madisonian debate, the concept of checks and balances, and the stringent procedures for amending the Constitution.
Democracy in America: Federalism - U.S. v. The States
This course provides an overview of the workings of federalism in the United States. Complex and changeable relationship between the national and state governments is explored. By focusing on the conflicts between national and state powers, the course develops a deeper understanding of the nature of governmental power in the American system.
Democracy in America: Civil Liberties - Safeguarding the Individual
This course explores the concept of civil liberties in American life, distinguishing civil liberties from civil rights and illuminating some of the problems encountered in protecting civil liberties. As the unit points out, most of us have a conception of the Bill of Rights as a list of absolutes, but this has never been the case. At some point, as our courts have often recognized, the exercise of civil liberties conflicts with other values that we also hold dear. The result is that we have frequently balanced liberty against order. The course also demonstrates what happens when civil liberties collide.