How can images help make the past more accessible to students? If you are an educator looking for ways to enrich your classroom teaching, consider an upcoming workshop at the American Antiquarian Society—Picture Perfect: Nineteenth-Century Women in Words and Images. The Center for Historic American visual Culture (CHAViC) at AAS is sponsoring a one-day interdisciplinary workshop designed to help K-12 educators develop strategies for using historical images in conjunction with texts by nineteenth-century women authors. How can a political cartoon depicting the effects of the fugitive slave law help students grasp the powerful influence of a Harriet Beecher Stowe novel? How can an engraving of a frigate provide a window to the significance of an Emily Dickinson poem? What does a lithograph of an Osage woman (pictured left) have in common with the stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder? Come to the workshop to find out!
Participants will have the rare opportunity to examine and learn firsthand from AAS collections, and they will leave well-armed with knowledge and activities to take back to the classroom. Lead scholar Laura Smith from the University of New Hampshire along with AAS staff will guide participants in interpreting historical images and how to use them in concert with texts frequently taught in K-12 classrooms. The day will include two workshops using primary sources. The first will examine the many roles of women in nineteenth-century America, while the second will focus on influential female writers and how images can help students find those writings more accessible.
For more information and details on how to register click here.
