National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: America in Class: The Chinese Question From a Chinese Standpoint, 1873
Lesson on how the Chinese in California confronted anti-Chinese sentiment and discrimination in the late 1800s. Comprehensive instructional activity with primary source materials.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: America in Class: Aylmer's Motivation in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Birthmark"
Lesson on why Aylmer, the protagonist of Nathaniel Hawthorne's story "The Birthmark," undertakes his fatal experiment. Lesson contents contain literary text, strategies for analysis, and vocabulary.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: America in Class: Thomas Paine's Common Sense, 1776
Lesson on how Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense convinced reluctant Americans to abandon the goal of reconciliation with Britain and accept independence as the only option for preserving their liberty.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: America in Class: Benjamin Franklin's Satire of Witch Hunting
Lesson uses primary resource to explore Benjamin Franklin's satire of a witch trial and his argument that human affairs should be guided, above all, by reason.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: America in Class: The Radio: Blessing or Curse? A 1929 Debate
Lesson on how the debate over commercial radio reflected American attitudes toward technological change in the 1920s. Includes teacher notes, background, strategies for text analysis and close reading questions as well as follow-up and...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: America in Class: Progressivism in the Factory
Lesson on Progressivism in the Factory uses primary resources to explore how Americans defined progress during the Progressive Era. Comprehensive content for lesson plan.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: America in Class: Women, Temperance Reform, and the Cult of Domesticity
Lesson on how women's role in the campaign against alcohol consumption in 19th-century America reflected the strengths and limitations of the cult of domesticity. Complete set of resources for a comprehensive study.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: America in Class: The Cult of Domesticity
A lesson that looks at the place of women in nineteenth century America. While their role that was constrained by societal expectations, they still wielded political power in subtle ways.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: America in Class: Expansion of Democracy During the Jacksonian Era
Lesson where students explore the emergence of the American system of democracy and political parties between 1820 and 1850. Using paintings by George Caleb Bingham and Richard Caton Woodville, and a political cartoon depicting the...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: America in Class: The Expansion of Democracy During the Jacksonian Era
Lesson on how the character of American politics changed between the 1820s and 1850s as a result of growing popular participation. Complete set of resources including primary source material, teacher notes, vocabulary, and strategies for...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: America in Class: Lexington and Concord: Tipping Point of Revolution
Lesson where students examine primary texts from 1775 and 1776 to explore the impact of the Battles of Lexington and Concord on people's attitudes towards the British. Up to that point, protests against the British had not been violent,...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: America in Class: American Revolution as Civil War
A lesson where young scholars examine the journal of a young Scottish woman, Janet Schaw, visiting North Carolina in 1775. She writes of her experiences observing the tensions and rivalries in the Cape Fear River area that pitted...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: America in Class: Successful European Colonies in the New World
Lesson using primary source material on European attempts to establish colonies in the New World and why some were successful but most failed.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: America in Class: Failed European Colonies in the New World
Lesson that examines some of the reasons European efforts to establish colonies in the New World were often met with failure. It focuses on the story of nine Jesuit priests who started a small colony on Chesapeake Bay in the hopes of...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: America in Class: Early Visual Representations of the New World
A lesson plan that examines how Native Americans were portrayed by artists in the sixteenth century, whose aim was to convey their appearance to a European audience, and thereby encourage investment in future New World explorations. By...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Teacher Serve: Freedom's Story: The Civil Rights Movement: 1968 2008
An excellent essay from the National Humanities Center that explores the civil rights movement after the groundbreaking legislation in the 1960s. It looks at how the civil rights movement has transitioned in the last part of the 20th and...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: America in Class: America in the 1920s: Felix the Cat
The National Humanities Center presents collections of primary resources compatible with the Common Core State Standards - historical documents, literary texts, and works of art - thematically organized with notes and discussion...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: The West, the Gilded and the Gritty: America, 1870 1912
Four nineteenth-century landscape paintings that suggest the meaning of the West in American life.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: New Frontier, the Gilded and the Gritty: America, 1870 1912
A speech and an essay that alternately praise the acquisition of foreign territory by the U.S. and that raise questions about the costs and value of these imperialistic adventures.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Documents Relating to the Mormon Migration
Primary documents related to the promotion of and resistance to the expansion of Mormonism.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Culture of Common Man: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Excerpts From "Self Reliance"
Emerson's famous essay emerging from the Transcendentalist period that celebrates unfettered individualism.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Reading Guide: Henry David Thoreau, "Walden"
Thoreau offers in this excerpt from Walden the Transcendentalist observation that each human must search for religious meaning within himself and not as a quest to glorify God.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Nathaniel Hawthorne: "My Kinsman, Major Molineux"
Hawthorne's short story that examines how America has changed in the generation since the Revolution by depicting the growth and challenges faced by a young man in the story.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Reading Guide: John C. Calhoun
An essay by the South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun, outlining his belief in a "concurrent majority" and the power of individual majority groups to determine whether to follow a particular law that had been passed.