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Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshops for Community College Faculty
If these questions and propositions intrigue you, the Western Reserve Historical Society invites you to apply to a National Endowment for the Humanities-sponsored Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshop for Community College Faculty in the summer of 2009. Cleveland, Ohio: From Plymouth Rock to Ellis Island and Beyond Established in 1796, Cleveland, Ohio, began as a clone of a New England town, complete with a Public Square and arguably with expectations of a demographic future that would be culturally similar to the community’s origins as a part of “New Connecticut.” But, as Cleveland became a participant in the rapid mercantile and industrial growth that occurred around the Great Lakes during the Nineteenth Century, it evolved into a highly diverse community. By 1920 approximately two thirds of its population of nearly 800,000 was of foreign birth or foreign parentage. An additional 35,000 inhabitants were African-American, most of whom had arrived as part of the Great Migration. Within a century Cleveland had moved from what might be called a “Plymouth Rock” culture to an Ellis Island culture. Today, some two centuries after its founding, Cleveland and its surrounding suburbs are layered with landmarks which visually explicate its development into a major multicultural metropolitan area. The city’s Public Square endures, as do dozens of churches and meeting and performance halls established by migrant groups from Europe and the American South. These churches and halls often provide the center of neighborhoods that still preserve the spacial world that migrants created and in which they lived their lives. Tremont, which exists beside the industrial Cuyahoga Valley, Little Italy on the east side of the city, and Slavic Village, yet another industrial immigrant neighborhood, are important urban landscapes that speak of the great European migration that reshaped Great Lakes cities such as Cleveland in the half century after the American Civil War. Cedar-Central, home to many of Cleveland’s principle African-American churches was the outgrowth of the Great Migration. Created because of that migration and the discrimination that confronted the migrants, Cedar Central can be seen as ghetto, as home, or as a small scale Midwestern echo of Harlem. Today, the image of Ellis Island still looms large in local memory, but the reality of the community’s demographics shows that image and memory being eclipsed by a new cultural landscape. The central city is largely African-American and Latino and the suburban areas surrounding the city, while home to many descendants of the European immigrants are also home to a growing number of individuals who represent the global migrations that occurred after the liberalization of the United States’ immigration law in 1965. What was a Protestant community and then became Catholic, Jewish and Protestant community, is now also Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Jain, and Sikh. What was European-centered is now Asian, Latino, Middle Eastern and, increasingly sub-Saharan African. Well over 100 different ethnic communities have a viable and visible presence within northeastern Ohio. The newest residents have begun to create signifiers through the institutions they have established and in doing so have altered and enriched, but not obscured the existing older landscapes of migration.
Lectures, readings, and numerous site visits will focus on several major themes: • Landscape and Memory: The workshop will place strong emphasis on reading landscape and material culture and incorporating these readings into academic discourse in the two-year college. Each weekly session will include two extensive tours of migrant related sites/landscapes in Greater Cleveland. • The Creation of Image and the Role of Heritage and Culture. Workshop discussions will prompt participants to consider how the image of migration/immigration has been constructed in the United States either as part of a political/social agenda or as heritage on the part of a particular migrant/immigrant community. • Moving Past Ellis Island: Many of the landscapes to be visited, and the topics for lectures and discussions will focus on the histories and experiences of the newest migrants (such as Sub-Saharan African, Muslim, South Asian, and Latino) to the United States. • Seeing the Humanities in Migration. While the workshop is structured around the history of migration nationally and regionally, its content will fully encompass the arts and humanities. Visits to ethnic museums and discussions with the museum curators will introduce them to Polish poets, Ukrainian sculptors, Czech opera composers and the arts and music of the African diaspora.
Director of the Workshop Dr. John J. Grabowski is the Krieger-Mueller Historian for the Western Reserve Historical Society and the Krieger-Mueller Associate Professor of Applied History at Case Western Reserve University. He is a published scholar in the fields of immigration and ethnicity and has twice served as a Fulbright Senior Lecturer at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. See: http://www.case.edu/artsci/hsty/grabowski.html Staff Faculty Dr. Edward Jay Pershey is the Vice President for Museums and Historic Properties for the Western Reserve Historical Society. He is an expert in the reading of material culture and in the relationship between migration and industrialization in the United States External Faculty Professor John Bodnar is the Chancellor’s Professor in the Department of History at Indiana University. He is the author of Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century; The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America and a number of other major works relating to memory and immigration. Professor Gilbert Doho is the director of the Ethnic Studies Program at Case Western Reserve University and Associate Professor CWRU’s Department of Modern Languages and Literature. He is currently working on a volume capturing the voices and memories of African migrants in northeastern Ohio. Professor Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad is Professor of the History of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. She has published extensively on the history of Muslim migration to and Muslim life in the United States. Professor Jose Sola is an assistant professor in the Department of History at Cleveland State University. He specializes in twentieth century Latin American and Caribbean history with a focus on Puerto Rican history. Migrant Community Panelists Mr. Gene Bak, Founder and Director of the John Paul II, Polish Cultural Center, Cleveland, Ohio Workshop Coordinator Stefanie Moore Huffman is an educator at the Western Reserve Historical Society and is serving as the Workshop Coordinator.
Headquarters -- The Western Reserve Historical Society The workshop will be headquartered at the Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland’s oldest existing cultural institution. Established in 1867, the Society is one of the largest private historical agencies in the United States. Today its collections of furniture, costume, and automobiles are ranked among the finest in the nation. Importantly, its archives-library, ranks among the major American urban history research centers with extensive collections of manuscripts, photographs, newspapers, maps, and publications relating to all aspects of the development of northeastern Ohio with particularly strong collections relating to migration and immigration. The collections of the Western Reserve Historical Society will play a significant role in the workshops – they will be discussed and interpreted by staff and made available to workshop participants for study, examination, and potential curriculum development. Your Neighborhood – University Circle University Circle, the home to the Western Reserve Historical Society, is also home to an unparalleled grouping of educational, medical, and cultural institutions including the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Cleveland Orchestra, Case Western Reserve University, and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Your City – Cleveland, Ohio Situated on the shore of Lake Erie, Cleveland, Ohio is not only an ideal location for an examination of migrant landscapes, but also a city with numerous amenities for the visitor. It is home to a world-class orchestra, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, sports teams such as the Indians, Browns, and Cavaliers, one of the nation’s largest theatrical districts, Playhouse Square, and a very diverse selection of ethnic restaurants some of which will be included in the workshop’s optional evening itineraries.
Moving Migration Memory Beyond Text in the Classroom There is much to see and much to interpret in the built landscape of Greater Cleveland as well as in the archival and material culture collections at the Western Reserve Historical Society and the community’s migrant museums. But our intent in this workshop is not only to teach “how to see” but to prompt the participants to explore ways in which they can take this very visceral experience back to the classroom. We expect the participants to come away from the workshop with new ideas regarding the migrant/immigrant history of the United States, with new understandings about the construction of memory and heritage, and with new appreciations for non-textual sources, be they landscape, image, or artifact. Our goal is to prompt you to use this information in new and exciting ways when you return to the classroom. Each participant will be asked to bring a digital camera to the workshop and, if available, a video camera. We will ask that everyone create an archive of images and, if possible, sounds that relate to the topic of cultural memory. We will help participants start this process by providing them with digitized images from the Society’s collections upon their arrival. The Historical Society will also host any program produced by a workshop participant on its website, whether that program takes the form of a travelogue of their trip to Cleveland or an addition to their teaching curriculum. Readings Participants will be expected to have purchased and read the following books before the workshop:
Lodging Out-of-town workshop participants have three options for lodging during their stay in Cleveland. Travel Cleveland is served by Amtrak, bus, and a variety of airlines. The bus and Amtrak stations are located in the downtown area. Cleveland Hopkins Airport is located west of the city, but is connected to the downtown and the University Circle area by a light rail line “The Rapid Transit.”
The workshop schedule is both rich and full. You will have the opportunity to interact with major scholars in the areas of immigration, migration, landscape, and material culture. You will have the chance to visit halls, a mosque, churches, social service centers and markets. So, be prepared to walk, ride, listen, question, debate, and enjoy! You will be tired at the end of the day – but you will have learned and seen much! Workshop participants are required to arrive in Cleveland on the Sunday evening preceding the Monday commencement of the workshop. An opening reception will be held for all participants at the Historical Society on Sunday evening. Workshop sessions/travel will take place from Monday through Friday. Participants have the option of staying over for additional research at the Historical Society or travel/sightseeing on Saturday. Sunday: Welcoming Reception, 6 pm at WRHS. Workshop participants will convene in the Crawford Auto Aviation Museum for a reception that will include light refreshments, introductions to WRHS staff, and the screening of the PBS video Taxi Dreams, which chronicles the lives of six immigrant taxi drivers in New York City. Monday: Theme: Overview of US Migration History Tuesday: Theme: Reading Memory in Landscape, Monuments and Material Culture Wednesday: Theme: Seeing the Migration Landscape – a tour of Cleveland. Thursday: Theme: Memories in the Making – Seeing Beyond the Judeo-Christian US Friday: Theme: Memories in the Making – The World Beyond Ellis Island Saturday Optional day for additional research at WRHS
Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshops are offered by the National Endowment for the Humanities to provide community college faculty with the opportunity to engage in intensive study and discussion of important topics and issues in American history and culture, while providing them with direct experiences in the interpretation of significant historical sites and the use of archival and other primary historical evidence. ELIGIBILITY These projects are designed for faculty members at American community colleges. Adjunct and part-time lecturers as well as full-time faculty are eligible to apply. An applicant need not have an advanced degree in order to qualify. Candidates for degrees are only eligible to apply if they are employed by an institution other than the one at which they are degree candidates and if their participation is intended to enhance their teaching of American undergraduates. Degree candidates can not use their participation in an NEH Landmarks project to meet a degree requirement, including work on masters’ theses or doctoral dissertations. Applicants must be United States citizens, residents of U.S. jurisdictions, or foreign nationals who have been residing in the United States or its territories for at least the three years immediately preceding the application deadline. Foreign nationals teaching outside the U.S. are not eligible to apply. Applicants must complete the NEH application cover sheet and provide all of the information requested below to be considered eligible. Individuals may not apply to study with a director of a Landmarks project who is a current colleague or a family member. Individuals may not apply to participate in a Workshop given by the same director on the same topic in which they have previously participated; in other words, they should not attend the same Workshop twice. Preference will be given to applicants who have never participated in an NEH Landmarks Workshop. SELECTION CRITERIA A selection committee will read and evaluate all properly completed applications. The committee will consist of the project director and two other scholars in the field; at least one will be a community college faculty member or administrator. Special consideration is given to the likelihood that an applicant will benefit professionally and personally from the Workshop experience. It is important, therefore, to address each of the following factors in preparing the application essay: STIPEND, TENURE, AND CONDITIONS OF AWARD Community College faculty selected to participate will receive a stipend of $750 at the end of the residential Workshop session. Stipends are intended to help cover ordinary living expenses, books, and travel expenses to and from the Workshop location. Travel supplements will be available, but will be allocated on a case-by-case basis after the workshop session is over. Stipends and travel supplements are taxable. APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS This application packet should contain a letter from the project director describing in detail the content of the Workshop, the institutional setting, what is expected of participants, and specific provisions for lodging and subsistence. In some cases, directors have websites for their projects and the information letter may be downloaded from their website. All application materials must be sent to the project director at the address listed on the program poster. Application materials and reference letters sent to the Endowment will not be processed . Please indicate on the application cover sheet your first and second choices of Workshop dates. CHECKLIST OF APPLICATION MATERIALS A completed application consists of three copies of the following collated items: SUBMISSION OF APPLICATIONS AND NOTIFICATION PROCEDURE Completed applications should be submitted to the project director at the following address and should be postmarked no later than March 16, 2009. EQUAL OPPORTUNITY STATEMENT Endowment programs do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, or age. For further information, write to NEH Equal Opportunity Officer, 1100 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20506. TDD: 202/606 8282 (this is a special telephone device for the Deaf).
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