Websites for Teachers and Learners

• National Constitution Center

  

  The National Constitution Center is an independent, non-partisan, and non-profit organization dedicated to increasing public understanding of, and appreciation for, the Constitution, its history, and its contemporary relevance.

• Teaching the Middle East

  

  Scholars from the University of Chicago developed, and master teachers tested, this resource to provide an overview of Middle Eastern cultures and their contributions to the world.

• Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives

  

  Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives aims to inspire people to come together to read, see, and think about classical literature and how it continues to influence and invigorate American cultural life.

  Featured Websites

  • Exploring Ancient World Cultures
  • Metropolitan Museum of Art
  • Odyssey Online
  • Perseus Digital Library
  • Troy

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • 300 Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae: Herodotus's Real History
  • A Story of Epic Proportions: What makes a Poem an Epic?
  • It Came From Greek Mythology
  • Lesson 2: The Greek Alphabet: more familiar than you think!
  • Live from Ancient Olympia!
  • Socrates and the Law: Argument in an Athenian Jail
  • Sophocles' Antigone: Ancient Greek Theatre, Live From Antiquity!
  • The Olympic Medal: It's All Greek to Us!
  • The Victor's Virtue: A Cultural History of Sport

• Crafting Freedom Materials

  

  Crafting Freedom Materials is a comprehensive NEH-funded resource on the African-American experience during the antebellum period. For teachers of social studies, language arts, and other humanities subjects.

  Featured Websites

  • Africans in America

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • African-American Communities in the North Before the Civil War
  • Families in Bondage
  • Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series: Removing the Mask
  • Slave Narratives: Constructing U.S. History Through Analyzing Primary Sources

• Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible

  

  The words of the King James Bible ring out today in books, poems, popular songs, speeches, and sermons. Visit Manifold Greatness for the story of one of the most widely read books in the English language.

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Dr. King's Dream
  • Introducing Metaphors Through Poetry
  • Lesson 1: Fragment on the Constitution and Union (1861)—The Purpose of the American Union
  • Lesson 1: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nonviolent Resistance
  • Lesson 1: The First Great Awakening
  • Lesson 2: Religion and the Argument for American Independence
  • Lesson 3: Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying": Crossing the River
  • Lesson 3: Religion and the Fight for American Independence
  • Lesson 3: The Gettysburg Address (1863)—Defining the American Union
  • Lesson 4: The Second Inaugural Address (1865)—Restoring the American Union
  • Let Freedom Ring: The Life & Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Power of Nonviolence
  • Poems of Tennyson and Noyes: Pictures in Words
  • Recognizing Similes: Fast as a Whip

• Created Equal

  

  The NEH Created Equal initiative uses the power of documentary films to encourage public conversations about the changing meanings of freedom and equality in America. The five films that are part of this project tell the remarkable stories of individuals who challenged the social and legal status quo, from slavery to segregation.

  Featured Websites

  • "Created Equal": Four films on the history of the civil rights movement

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • African-American Soldiers in World War I: The 92nd and 93rd Divisions
  • Birth of a Nation, the NAACP, and the Balancing of Rights
  • JFK, Freedom Riders and the Civil Rights Movement
  • Lesson 1: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nonviolent Resistance
  • Lesson 1: The Battle Over Reconstruction: The Aftermath of War
  • Lesson 2: Slavery's Opponents and Defenders
  • Lesson 2: The Battle Over Reconstruction: The Politics of Reconstruction
  • Lesson 3: The Battle Over Reconstruction: The Aftermath of Reconstruction
  • Lesson 5: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Rise of Social Reform in the 1930s
  • The Emancipation Proclamation: Freedom's First Steps
  • The Freedom Riders and the Popular Music of the Civil Rights Movement

• Virtual_Oaxaca

  

  Virtual_Oaxaca is a virtual representation of Oaxaca, the city, surrounding archeological sites, and arts communities. Created by teachers in an NEH-funded Summer Institute. Plan a lesson, watch a video, and peek at Oaxaca on Second Life. More to come!

  Featured Websites

  • Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World
  • La diversidad cultural de México
  • La Red de Radioifusoras y Televisoras Educativas y Culturales de México A.C.

• Great Chicago Stories

  

  Read historical fiction stories that illuminate Chicago's past. Use the Interactive History Map to look closer at artifacts from the collection of the Chicago History Museum and to explore locations throughout the city from each story. Build further on your experience with classroom activities.

  Featured Websites

  • Great Chicago Fire and the Web of Memory

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Carl Sandburg's "Chicago": Bringing a Great City Alive

• Picturing U.S. History

  

  Picturing United States History, an NEH-funded project is based on the belief that visual materials are vital to understanding the American past. The website provides online "Lessons in Looking," a guide to Web resources, forums, essays, reviews, and classroom activities to help teachers incorporate visual evidence into the classroom. The site also serves as a clearing house for incorporating visual documents into their U.S. history, American studies, literature, and other humanities courses.

  Featured Websites

  • Picturing America

• Natural Law, Natural Rights, and American Constitutionalism

  

  NEH funded online archive of educational resources on the history of natural law, natural rights and American Constitutionalism designed and written by scholars associated with the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.

• Remembering 9/11: NEH Archive

  

  The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) marked the 10th anniversary of the tragedy of September 11th with a series of events and opportunities for remembrance and reflection across the country.

• Making the Wright Connection

  

  Making The Wright Connection is an online community of, and clearinghouse for, scholars and teachers of the works of Richard Wright (1908-1960), the author of such major works as Uncle Tom’s Children, Native Son, and Black Boy. Website includes podcasts of lectures by some of the world’s foremost scholars of Wright.

• Darwin's Letters Project

  

  This website provides basic descriptions of more than 15,000 letters known to have been written by or to Charles Darwin, and the complete texts of around half of those. The site includes educational resources for teachers across the curriculum.

• Indians of the Midwest

  

  This site highlights recent research of scholars who have provided new insights about the cultures and histories of Indian peoples in the Midwest.

  Featured Websites

  • Discovering Lewis and Clark
  • EarthWorks (University of Cincinnati)
  • History: Native American
  • Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition
  • Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery
  • NativeWeb

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Anishinabe/Ojibwe/Chippewa: Culture of an Indian Nation
  • Native American Cultures Across the U.S.
  • Not "Indians," Many Tribes: Native American Diversity
  • The Native Americans' Role in the American Revolution: Choosing Sides
  • Traditions and Languages of Three Native Cultures: Tlingit, Lakota, & Cherokee
  • What Should a House Do?
  • What Was Columbus Thinking?

• Literatures, Religions, and Arts of the Himalayan Regions

  

  The products of this NEH-funded Summer Institute for School Teachers offers a wealth of curricular plans and interactive ideas for the classroom. Topics cover a variety of disciplines: history, geography, literature, religion, art, and environmental studies for every grade level.

• Battle of Shiloh: Civil War at 150

  

  Visit the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture. Learn about the Battle of Shiloh, which raged 150 years ago on April 6–7. With more than 24,000 casualties and 16,000 wounded, it was the bloodiest battle, and most important, in the war up to that time.

• Picturing Hawai'i

  

  Picturing Hawai'i is a new curriculum from the Honolulu Museum of Art. The comprehensive Teacher Resource Book and the accompanying six images show you how to use works from the Museum's collection to supplement your lessons in history, fine arts, language arts, math, and science.

  Featured Websites

  • Asia For Educators
  • Asia Society: Education and Learning
  • Black Ships & Samurai: Commodore Perry and the Opening of Japan
  • SARAI: South Asia Resource Access on the Internet
  • Teaching (and Learning) about Japan

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Can You Haiku?
  • Hamlet Meets Chushingura: Traditions of the Revenge Tragedy
  • Japanese Poetry: Tanka? You're Welcome!
  • Life in the Floating World: Ukiyo-e Prints and the Rise of the Merchant Class in Edo Period Japan
  • Say Hi to Haibun Fun
  • The World of Haiku

• Center for the Study of the American Constitution

  Housed within the History Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, CSAC does research and publishes materials relating to the creation and ratification of the American Constitution.

  Featured Websites

  • Bill of Rights Institute
  • Constitution Day
  • Exploring Constitutional Law
  • Founders' Constitution
  • National Constitution Center

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Balancing Three Branches at Once: Our System of Checks and Balances
  • Lesson 1: Anti-federalist Arguments Against "A Complete Consolidation"
  • Lesson 1: Starting a Government from Scratch
  • Lesson 1: The Road to the Constitutional Convention
  • Lesson 2: Chief Executives Compared: The Federalist Papers
  • Lesson 2: The Question of Representation at the 1787 Convention
  • Lesson 4: James Madison: Internal Improvements Balancing Act: Federal/State, Executive/Legislative
  • Ratifying the Constitution
  • The Constitutional Convention: Four Founding Fathers You May Never Have Met
  • The Constitutional Convention: What the Founding Fathers Said
  • The Federalist Debates: Balancing Power Between State and Federal Governments

• The Shenandoah Valley Campaign

  

  During the American Civil War, this battle catapulted Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson from relative obscurity to the first rank of Southern generals. Explore this interactive map of the second half of the campaign. Hosted by the Encyclopedia of Virginia. Image: General "Stonewall" Jackson. Virginia Historical Society, William Garl Brown, ca. 1865–1900

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Lesson 2: The Battles of the Civil War

• Seven Days' Battles

  

  The Seven Days’ Battles, June 25–July 1, 1862, the decisive engagements of McClellan's Peninsula Campaign included Confederate Balloon Reconnaissance. "Jeb" Stuart became legend by executing his famous “Ride around McClellan.” Hosted by the Encyclopedia of Virginia.

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Lesson 2: The Battles of the Civil War

• Year of the “Charles W. Morgan”

  A resource set developed by The Education Department at Mystic Seaport for the “Year of the Charles Morgan,” commemorating the re-launch of the Charles W. Morgan, the only remaining wooden whaling ship in existence. The materials and features found in this resource set contain primary source material and other content related to the Morgan and whaling. For more whaling resources, visit the Whaling Resource Set.

  Featured Websites

  • New Bedford Whaling Museum

• Ohioana Authors

  

  Ohioana Authors, supported in part by the Ohio Humanities Council, celebrates Ohio’s rich literary and historical heritage and Ohio’s contribution to American culture through the written word.

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, and the Unreliable Biographers
  • Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, and the Unreliable Narrator
  • The Poet's Voice: Langston Hughes and You

• Voices of Democracy

  The Voices of Democracy project is designed to promote the study of great speeches and public debates. The emphasis of the project is on the actual words of those who, throughout American history, have defined the country's guiding principles.

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • "Common Sense": The Rhetoric of Popular Democracy
  • Lesson One. The Omnipotence of the Majority
  • Lesson Three. The Power of the Majority over Thought
  • Walt Whitman to Langston Hughes: Poems for a Democracy

• Picturing Early America: People, Places, and Events 1770–1870

  

  A resource developed from NEH Summer Institutes held at Salem State University exploring early American art and culture. The website assists teachers of American history, literature, art, geography, social studies, American studies, and other fields who wish to incorporate American art into their classrooms. It includes podcasts, unit plans, and print and electronic bibliographies.

  Featured Websites

  • Picturing America

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Benjamin Franklin's Many "Hats"
  • Homer's Civil War Veteran: Battlefield to Wheat Field
  • Midnight Ride of Paul Revere: Fact, Fiction, and Artistic License
  • Picture Lincoln
  • The Massachusetts 54th Regiment: Honoring the Heroes

• John Steinbeck: Social Critic and Ecologist

  

  This National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers held at the Steinbeck Institute, San Jose State University, contains a rich collection of scholarly essays, lesson plans, maps, and images covering Steinbeck's work and his world.

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Depression-Era Photographs: Worth a Thousand Words
  • Dust Bowl Days
  • Evaluating Eyewitness Reports
  • John Steinbeck’s "The Grapes of Wrath": The Inner Chapters
  • John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath”: Verbal Pictures
  • Steinbeck’s Use of Nonfiction Sources in "The Grapes of Wrath"

• Elizabeth Murray Project

  

  This resource site for early American history features a constantly growing digital collection of primary sources — print and manuscript documents, as well as images — and transcribed versions of these materials from various libraries and archives. It also includes a host of K–12 teaching resources including timeline, interactive primary sources and lesson plans.

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • American Colonial Life in the Late 1700s: Distant Cousins
  • Boycotting Baubles of Britain
  • Colonial Broadsides and the American Revolution
  • Empire and Identity in the American Colonies
  • Inventing a New Republican Culture for America
  • Mapping Colonial New England: Looking at the Landscape of New England
  • Voices of the American Revolution

• Race—Are We So Different?

  

  Race—Are We So Different? is a project of the American Anthropological Association. A traveling exhibit and website, it looks through the eyes of history, science, and lived experience to explain differences among people and reveal the reality—and unreality—of race. The site contains a virtual tour of the exhibit, resources for middle and high school teachers, STEM resources, and a robust American history section with an interactive timeline.

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • African-American Communities in the North Before the Civil War
  • African-American Soldiers After World War I: Had Race Relations Changed?
  • Birth of a Nation, the NAACP, and the Balancing of Rights
  • Lesson 2: Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Lesson 3: African-Americans and the New Deal's Civilian Conservation Corps

• Seventeen Moments in Soviet History

  

  Seventeen Moments in Soviet History contains a rich archive of texts, images, maps, and audio and video materials from the Soviet era (1917–1991). The materials are arranged by year and by subject, are fully searchable, and are translated into English. Students, educators, and scholars will find materials about Soviet propaganda, politics, economics, society, crime, literature, art, dissidents, and hundreds of other topics.

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Lesson 1: How "Grand" and "Allied" was the Grand Alliance?
  • Lesson 1: Sources of Discord, 1945–1946
  • Lesson 1: Soviet Espionage in America
  • Lesson 2: How to Win a World War
  • Lesson 2: The House Un-American Activities Committee
  • Lesson 2: The Strategy of Containment, 1947–1948
  • Lesson 3: The Formation of the Western Alliance, 1948–1949
  • Lesson 3: The Rise and Fall of Joseph McCarthy
  • Lesson 3: Victory and the New Order in Europe
  • Lesson 4: The New Order for "Greater East Asia"

• Islamic Art Spots

  

  Seven video essays, part of NEH's Muslim Journeys initiative, spotlight art forms from calligraphy to garden design seen through the lenses of history, trade, and artistic practice. Each video is accompanied by primary resources and related readings for further study.

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Arabic Poetry: Guzzle a Ghazal!

• Nature, Culture, and History at Grand Canyon

  

  A multi-media educational project, “Nature, Culture, and History at the Grand Canyon,” includes an interactive website and DVD, digital audio-tour, walking tour brochure, and educational resources for K–20 teachers including Travelin’ Trunks and Lesson Plans.

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Davy Crockett, Tall Tales, and History
  • Go West: Imagining the Oregon Trail
  • Women's Suffrage: Why the West First?

• National History Day

  

  National History Day makes history come alive for America's youth by engaging them in the discovery of the historic, cultural, and social experiences of the past and inspiring them through exciting competitions and transforms teaching through project-based curriculum and instruction.

• thinkFlorida.org

  

  thinkFlorida.org is designed to bring the study of Florida into the classrooms. Created by the Florida Humanities Council, it combines articles written by distinguished humanities scholars with ideas and lesson plans from Florida teachers. Contains maps, photographs, and audio-visual resources. 

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Folklore in Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God"
  • The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962: The Missiles of October
  • Traces: Historic Archaeology

• Visual Culture of the American Civil War

  

  Produced by the American Social History Project, City University of New York, and funded through NEH's Summer Seminars Program, this resource provides multimedia presentations by historians, art historians, and archivists that are accompanied by archival images; primary documents illuminating aspects of the subject; and a bibliography of books, articles, and online resources.

  Featured Websites

  • Picturing America
  • Picturing U.S. History
  • The Civil War in Art

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Homer's Civil War Veteran: Battlefield to Wheat Field
  • Images at War
  • Picture Lincoln
  • The Massachusetts 54th Regiment: Honoring the Heroes

• Founders Online

  

  The National Archives and The University of Virginia Press developed this online resource with historical documents of the founders of the United States of America. Through this website, you will be able to read and search through thousands of records from George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison and see firsthand the growth of democracy and the birth of the Republic.

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Background on the Patriot Attitude Toward the Monarchy
  • Lesson 1: The President Under the Articles of Confederation
  • Lesson 1: The Road to the Constitutional Convention
  • Lesson 2: Chief Executives Compared: The Federalist Papers
  • Lesson 3: Creating the Office of the Presidency
  • Lesson 3: George Washington: The Precedent President
  • The Federalist Debates: Balancing Power Between State and Federal Governments

• Exploring the Past: Archaeology in the Upper Mississippi River Valley

  

  The NEH-funded Summer Institute for School Teachers at the Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center website displays a rich array of humanities and STEM teacher-created lesson plans from botany through history (and more) from the elementary level through the high school, as well as teacher development materials.

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Life on the Great Plains
  • Native American Cultures Across the U.S.
  • Not "Indians," Many Tribes: Native American Diversity

• Religious Worlds of New York: The Everyday Life of American Religious Diversity

  

  This site is the product of the Religious Worlds institute, a project of the Interfaith Center of New York and Union Theological Seminary, with support from the NEH. The site offers an array of lesson plans, curriculum idea, and professional development based on NEH Summer Institutes for School Teachers that delve into the doctrines of the world's major religions and encourage academically grounded engagement with the social realities of contemporary religious communities.

• Gilder Lehrman Affliate School Program: Gordon Wood on the Idea of America Webchat

  

  Distinguished historian Gordon Wood, in conversation with President of Gilder Lehrman Jim Basker, discuss the idea of America.

• Visual Culture of the American Civil War

  

  Offered through the Social History Project at City University of New York, this special feature of the NEH-funded Picturing History website, contains targeted videos, lectures, and a wealth of visual and textual primary source material on Civil War subjects for the classroom.

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Homer's Civil War Veteran: Battlefield to Wheat Field
  • Images at War
  • Lesson 1: On the Eve of War: North vs. South
  • Lesson 2: The Battles of the Civil War
  • Lesson 3: Abraham Lincoln and Wartime Politics
  • Picture Lincoln

• Histories of the National Mall

  

  Explore historical maps, discover stories you never knew, find people and historical events related to the Mall's past.

• Shakespeare: From the Globe to the Global

  

  This collaborative production of the college teacher-participants in a 2011 NEH summer humanities institute at the Folger Shakespeare Library models various approaches, contexts, and resources. Collectively, this sampler of participant themes with applications for teaching, faculty video clips, and annotated bibliographies provides exciting new materials for teaching and research.

  Featured Websites

  • Folger Digital Texts
  • Folger Shakespeare Library: Online Resources for Teachers

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Shakespeare's "Macbeth": Fear and the "Dagger of the Mind"
  • Shakespeare's "Macbeth: Fear and the Motives of Evil
  • Shakespeare's "Othello" and the Power of Language
  • Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet": 'You Kiss by the Book'
  • Vengeful Verbs in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”

• Tories, Timid, or True Blue?

  

  MIT’s HyperStudio Lab for Digital Humanities’ investigative experience into decisions faced on the eve of the American Revolution by Boston’s Old North Church congregation in 1775.

  Featured Websites

  • Mission US: For Crown or Colony

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Colonial Broadsides and the American Revolution
  • Lesson 1: The War in the North, 1775–1778
  • Not Only Paul Revere: Other Riders of the American Revolution
  • Voices of the American Revolution

• Shakespeare: From the Globe to the Global

  

  A collaborative production of the college teacher-participants in a 2011 NEH summer humanities institute at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Over the course of five weeks, and with the guidance of faculty experts, the institute explored the historical developments through which the hyperbolic ambition signaled by the name of Shakespeare’s theatre became a reality.

• Standing Together: The Humanities and the Experience of War

  

  Standing Together is an NEH initiative to promote understanding of the military experience and to support returning veterans through films, literature, drama, discussion, and more.

• Emily Dickinson Museum: The Homestead and the Evergreens

  

  The Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts, includes The Homestead, where the poet was born and lived, and The Evergreens, home of the poet’s brother and his family. The teacher resource page includes a number of curriculum projects by NEH Summer Scholars.

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Emily Dickinson and Poetic Imagination: "Leap, Plashless"
  • Lesson 1: In Emily Dickinson's Own Words: Letters and Poems
  • Lesson 2: Responding to Emily Dickinson: Poetic Analysis
  • Lesson 3: Emulating Emily Dickinson: Poetry Writing

• What’s the Big Idea?

  

  This Massachusetts Humanities website provides teachers and middle-school students with the opportunity to engage in a range of philosophical discussions.

• Making the World Better: The Struggle for Equality in 19th Century America

  

  MassHumanities curriculum packet to teach about Massachusetts State House Women’s Leadership Project honorees and advocates for equal rights,  Lucy Stone and Sarah Parker Remond.

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Voting Rights for Women: Pro- and Anti-Suffrage
  • Who Were the Foremothers of Women's Equality?
  • Women's Equality: Changing Attitudes and Beliefs
  • Women's Suffrage: Why the West First?

• Railroads and the Making of Modern America

  

  This NEH-funded archive based at University of Nebraska–Lincoln Center for Digital Research in the Humanities traces the growth of railroads, telegraphs, and steam ships from 1850 to 1900 and the dynamic social change they brought to America. The website includes primary sources and teaching materials.

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • I Hear the Locomotives: The Impact of the Transcontinental Railroad
  • Lesson 3: The Battle Over Reconstruction: The Aftermath of Reconstruction
  • Was There an Industrial Revolution? Americans at Work Before the Civil War
  • Was There an Industrial Revolution? New Workplace, New Technology, New Consumers

• Wadsworth Atheneum

  

  The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, the oldest continually-operating public art museum in the United States, has experienced an extensive renovation funded in part by NEH. Major exhibitions and newly refurbished collections offer new interpretive content and deeper engagement with the artwork. An online collection of educational resources provide creative strategies for effectively addressing student learning objectives through the visual arts.

   

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Composition and Content in the Visual Arts
  • Lesson 3: Repetition in the Visual Arts
  • Realistic Impressions: Investigating Movements in the Visual Arts
  • What's in a Picture? An Introduction to Subject in the Visual Arts

• Disability History Museum

  

  This site hosts a library of virtual artifacts, education curricula, and museum exhibits (forthcoming). These programs are designed to foster research and study about the historical experiences of people with disabilities and their communities.

• Bible Odyssey

  

  A multifaceted exploration of the people, places, as well as passages of the Bible is enriched by searchable themes, a timeline, glossary, and much more, including completely searchable texts for three English versions. 

  Featured Websites

  • Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible
  • Teaching the Middle East

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Lesson 1: The First Great Awakening
  • Lesson 1: “The Metamorphoses” and Genesis: A Comparison of Creation-Flood Stories
  • Lesson 2: Religion and the Argument for American Independence
  • Lesson 2: Slavery's Opponents and Defenders
  • Lesson 3: Religion and the Fight for American Independence

• A New Nation Votes: American Election Returns 1787-1825

  

  A New Nation Votes is a searchable collection of election returns from the earliest years of American democracy. The data were compiled by Philip Lampi. The American Antiquarian Society and Tufts University Digital Collections and Archives have mounted it online for you with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Lesson 1: The Election Is in the House: The Denouement
  • Lesson 1: The First American Party System: U.S. Political Parties: The Principle of Legitimate Opposition
  • Lesson 2: The Election Is in the House: 1824: The Candidates and the Issues
  • Lesson 2: The First American Party System: A Documentary Timeline of Important Events (1787–1800)
  • Lesson 3: The Election Is in the House: Was There a Corrupt Bargain?
  • Lesson 3: The First American Party System: Federalists and Democratic-Republicans: The Platforms They Never Had

• Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature

  

  This digital collection from the University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries offers resources for research into a variety of historical children’s literature, including comparative editions of classic texts.

   

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • A Trip to Wonderland: The Nursery 'Alice'
  • Childhood Through the Looking-Glass
  • Cinderella Folk Tales: Variations in Plot and Setting
  • Fairy Tales Around the World
  • Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales
  • Helpful Animals and Compassionate Humans in Folklore

• Mapping Thoreau Country

  

  This website, developed partially through funds from MassHumanities, is an interactive cartographic exploration of Thoreau's itineraries and mapmaking in his home state of Massachusetts. Includes essays, illustrations, and links to further information.

  Featured Websites

  • Mapping Thoreau Country
  • Thoreau Reader

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Introducing the Essay: Twain, Douglass, and American Non-Fiction

• Teaching American Philosophy

  

  Teaching American Philosophy is a one of a kind resource for high school teachers looking for ways to introduce students to the philosophical ideas and debates that are central to American history, literature, political science, and science.

• Teaching the Middle East

  

  Discover the great currents of continuity and change throughout Middle Eastern history. Scholars from the University of Chicago include scholarly essays and lesson plans for your classroom.

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Arabic Poetry: Guzzle a Ghazal!
  • Egypt's Pyramids: Monuments with a Message
  • Egyptian Symbols and Figures: Hieroglyphs
  • Egyptian Symbols and Figures: Scroll Paintings
  • Hammurabi's Code: What Does It Tell Us About Old Babylonia?
  • The Cuneiform Writing System in Ancient Mesopotamia: Emergence and Evolution

• World War I and America

  

  World War I and America a multimedia website and anthology of writings by Americans who experienced World War I.

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • African-American Soldiers After World War I: Had Race Relations Changed?
  • African-American Soldiers in World War I: The 92nd and 93rd Divisions
  • Chronicling America: Uncovering a World at War
  • Lesson 1: United States Entry into World War I: Two Diametrically Opposed Views
  • Lesson 2: United States Entry into World War I: Some Hypotheses About U.S. Entry
  • Lesson 3: The Debate in the United States over the League of Nations: Five Camps: From Voices of Consent to Voices of Dissent

• The Chinese Railroad Workers in North America

  

  Stanford University’s online digital archive reflects the experiences of the Chinese migrant laborers whose work on the Transcontinental Railroad 1865-1869 was instrumental in the opening of the American West.

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Go West: Imagining the Oregon Trail
  • I Hear the Locomotives: The Impact of the Transcontinental Railroad
  • Lesson 3: The Battle Over Reconstruction: The Aftermath of Reconstruction
  • Pearl S. Buck: "On Discovering America"

• Indigenous Literary Perspectives In Global Conversation

  

  This resource from the University of Montana, Missoula campus, covers topics in Native American studies including curriculum suggestions from NEH Summer scholars.

  Featured Websites

  • Alaska History and Cultural Studies
  • Arctic Studies Center at the Smithsonian Institution
  • History: Native American
  • NativeWeb
  • Trail Tribes

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Anishinabe/Ojibwe/Chippewa: Culture of an Indian Nation
  • Lesson 2. Hopi Poetry
  • Lesson 3: Hopi Traditional Dance and Song
  • Native American Cultures Across the U.S.

• A President's Vision

  

  Texas Humanities offers an examination of some notable American presidents and considers some of the programs that they initiated during their administrations

  Featured Websites

  • Abraham Lincoln at the Crossroads
  • American Presidency Project
  • American President
  • National Constitution Center
  • Papers of George Washington
  • Presidential Speeches
  • Presidential Timeline of the Twentieth Century
  • The Presidents
  • The Roosevelts: An Intimate History
  • Thomas Jefferson's Monticello

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • George Washington: The Living Symbol
  • Jefferson vs. Franklin: Renaissance Men
  • Jefferson vs. Franklin: Revolutionary Philosophers
  • JFK, LBJ, and the Fight for Equal Opportunity in the 1960s
  • Lesson 1: FDR's Fireside Chats: The Power of Words
  • Lesson 1: How Was the White House Designed?
  • Lesson 1: The President Under the Articles of Confederation
  • Lesson 1: What Is the Purpose of the White House?
  • Lesson 2: Chief Executives Compared: The Federalist Papers
  • Lesson 2: What Has Happened in the White House?
  • Lesson 3: A President's Home and the President's House
  • Lesson 3: Abraham Lincoln and Wartime Politics
  • Lesson 3: George Washington: The Precedent President
  • Lesson 3: What Happens in the White House? A Timeline
  • Lesson 4: Abraham Lincoln, the 1860 Election, and the Future of the American Union and Slavery
  • Lesson 4: FDR and the Lend-Lease Act
  • Lesson 4: Thomas Jefferson on the Sedition Act
  • Lesson 5: Consequences of the Sedition Act
  • Lincoln Goes to War
  • Lincoln's First Inaugural Address: We Must Not Be Enemies
  • Lyndon B. Johnson and the Crisis in the Dominican Republic
  • Picture Lincoln