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News Release

Last modified: Thursday, September 3, 2009

IU centers awarded NEH funding to help teachers improve instruction on major social movements

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sept. 3, 2009

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University's efforts to promote excellence in social studies teaching have been recognized by the National Endowment for the Humanities, which has awarded the Center on Congress and the Center for the Study of History and Memory a $165,422 grant to co-sponsor a summer institute in Bloomington for high-school social studies teachers.

Titled "Social Movements in Modern America: Labor, Civil Rights, and Feminism," the three-week institute in July 2010 will help teachers understand the pivotal role of three major social movements in changing U.S. public policy over the last century. The institute will be co-directed by Edward G. Carmines, the Warner O. Chapman Professor and Rudy Professor of political science and research director for the Center on Congress at Indiana University Bloomington, and John Bodnar, Chancellor's Professor of history and co-director of the Center for the Study of History and Memory at IU Bloomington. Bodnar is also director of IU's Institute of Advanced Study.

The "Social Movements" institute will recruit 25 social studies teachers from grades nine through 12. Full-time teachers in public, private or church-affiliated schools are eligible to apply. The application deadline is March 1, 2010; the institute will run from July 11-31.

The institute will devote one week to each of the social movements, acquainting teachers with the latest scholarship and elements that tie the three movements together. The teachers will attend lectures, participate in classroom discussions, analyze essential primary sources, complete reading assignments, watch documentary films, visit historic sites and develop curricular materials. Following the institute, participants will be able to continue working on curricular materials via an institute Web site, where they will be able to post lesson plans and share strategies for making their instruction more effective.

The NEH has designated the institute as part of its "We the People" project, a special initiative designed to improve the teaching of American history and culture. The grant for the 2010 institute at IU Bloomington is one of 184 projects nationwide to be supported by a total of $29 million in NEH grant funding announced Aug. 20.

Three experts will join Carmines and Bodnar in conducting the institute: Carl Weinberg, editor of the Organization of American Historians Magazine, one of the premier publications on the teaching of history on both the secondary and university levels; Jennifer Maher, senior lecturer in the Department of Gender Studies at IU Bloomington and author of numerous articles, essays and reviews that deal with the women's movement; and Jeffrey Ogbonna Green Ogbar, an IU graduate who is now associate professor of history and director of the Institute for African American Studies at the University of Connecticut.

Purdue University Professor Lynn Nelson, a specialist on the teaching of history and civic education on the secondary level, will also join the institute faculty. Barbara Truesdell, assistant director of the Center for the Study of History and Memory, will manage administrative details.

About the Centers co-sponsoring the Summer Institute

The Center on Congress is a non-partisan educational and research institution at Indiana University Bloomington established in 1999 to help improve the public's understanding of Congress and to encourage civic engagement. The Center's director is Lee Hamilton, who served southern Indiana in the U.S. House from 1965 to 1999.

For more information, go to www.centeroncongress.org

The Center for the Study of History and Memory is an interdisciplinary research center at Indiana University Bloomington focusing on the field of memory studies. Founded in 1968 by Professor Oscar O. Winther, the Center's mission is to conduct original research on the myriad ways that people remember, represent, and use the past in public and private life. Daniel James, IU's Mendel Chair in Latin American History, is co-director.

For more information, go to www.indiana.edu/~cshm/

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