Past Institutes

The Making of Modern America (2020-2021 Online Series)

In the fall of 2020 and spring of 2021, Humanities Texas held a weekly webinar series for eleventh-grade U.S. history teachers, covering topics from World War I to the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

Curriculum

The curriculum aligned with the TEKS, addressing critical topics in the state's eleventh-grade U.S. history curriculum.

Each faculty member led a 75-minute session over Zoom that included a lecture, Q&A, and discussion centered on primary source documents. Faculty addressed the following topics: America and World War I; the 1918–1919 influenza epidemic and health in modern America; women's suffrage and the changing role of women; the Great Depression; FDR and the New Deal; World War II; the origins of the Cold War; the Eisenhower presidency; the Cuban Missile Crisis; the civil rights movement; LBJ and the Great Society; the Vietnam War; Nixon and Watergate; and the presidencies of Ford, Carter, and Reagan.

Like all Humanities Texas programs, the webinar series was content-based and teacher-centered, with an emphasis on teaching with primary sources and developing effective pedagogical strategies.

Faculty

The webinar series was led by faculty director Jeremi Suri (The University of Texas at Austin) and featured presentations by Robert M. Citino (National World War II Museum), Lizabeth Cohen (Harvard University), Charles Flanagan (National Archives), David Greenberg (Rutgers University), William Hitchcock (University of Virginia), Meg Jacobs (Princeton University), William P. Jones (University of Minnesota), Peniel Joseph (LBJ School of Public Affairs/UT Austin), Mark Atwood Lawrence (LBJ Presidential Library), Lien-Hang Nguyen (Columbia University), David M. Oshinsky (New York University), Monica Perales (University of Houston), Martin Sherwin (George Mason University), and Lisa Tetrault (Carnegie Melon University).

Schedule

You can view the full schedule for both the fall and the spring webinars here.

Sponsors

The institute was made possible with major funding from the State of Texas, with ongoing support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.