MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale
MacMillan Center

Summer Programming at the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition

Teachers’ Seminar: The Civil War and Modern American Memory

From June 10-24, 2018, the Gilder Lehrman Center hosted 25 college professors from 16 states for a weeklong seminar taught by GLC Director David W. Blight. Titled “The Civil War and Modern American Memory,” the seminar was jointly organized by the Council of Independent Colleges and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. During the seminar, the professors studied primary source materials and secondary works about the ongoing resonance of the Civil War in U.S. historical consciousness. Discussion also focused on current protests and extreme violence regarding Confederate monuments and the enduring myth of the Lost Cause.

Yale Public History Institute

For the past six years, in collaboration with the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), the Gilder Lehrman Center has conducted a weeklong public history institute. Under the leadership of the American History Workshop, more than 150 museum professionals, public and academic historians, and graduate students have explored ways of engaging the American public in difficult historical issues. This year, with support from the NMAAHC, the GLC organized a Working Group to evaluate how this program can best serve the professional field. From June 20-22, 2018, a group of seasoned museum and public history professionals met to discuss a broad range of issues that cultural institutions are faced with, from responding to current political urgencies, to recruitment of people of color and young people as staff, to creating meaningful partnerships with community-based organizations. The rich discussions engaged in by the Working Group will help reshape the Yale Public History Institute to meet these contemporary conditions.


L-R, front row: Richard Rabinowitz(American History Workshop), Deborah Schwartz (Brooklyn Historical Society), Michelle Zacks (GLC), Fath Ruffins (Smithsonian National Museum of American History). 2nd row: Gretchen Sorin (Cooperstown Graduate program), Jan Ramirez (National September 11 Memorial Museum), Cynthia Copeland (Educator and Pubic Historian; New York University affiliate). Back row: Lynda B. Kaplan (American History Workshop), Benjamin Filene (North Carolina Museum of History), Noelle Trent (National Civil Rights Museum), David W. Blight (GLC), Cassie Chinn (Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience), David Thelen (Indiana University-Bloomington, emeritus), Malgorzata Rymsza-Pawlowska

Student Workshop: Exploring Justice


Yale Graduate Student Amanda Hall discusses the historic role student activists have placed in social justice movements to New Haven area high school students participating in Exploring Justice, a four-day workshop sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Center.

Summer Humanities at Yale

A LEAP program (Leadership, Education & Athletics in Partnership) led by the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition and co-sponsored by the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration (RITM)


New Haven middle school students view protest posters at Yale’s Beinecke Library during the first session of “Summer Humanities at Yale,” a LEAP summer enrichment program led by the GLC and co-sponsored by RITM. Other programming will include “The New Faces of Latinx New Haven” (Carlos Hernandez and Connor Williams); “An Historic tour of Fair Haven” (Lee Cruz); “One Mic: Talking Hip Hop and Black Culture” (jub Sankofa); and a visit to El Museo del Bario and the Schomburg Library in NYC.

NEH Teachers Institute: The Long Civil Rights Movement


Posing for the camera are members of “The Long Civil Rights Movement,” a two-week teachers institute funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and led by the Area Cooperative Educational Services (ACES) and the Gilder Lehrman Center, held at Luce Hall, Yale University.

Teachers’ Seminar: The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass

From June 24-30, 2018, the GLC hosted a weeklong seminar for K-12 teachers interested in learning more about Frederick Douglass as an activist, artist, and thinker. Organized by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and taught by GLC Director David W. Blight, the seminar allowed 35 teachers in elementary, middle, and high schools to read broadly and think deeply about Douglass as a private person and a historical figure. Over the course of the week, the teachers developed and shared lesson plans designed to bring these ideas into the classroom.


Teachers participating in the “Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass” seminar visit the Monument to the 29th Regiment, Connecticut Colored Volunteer Infantry in Criscuolo Park in Fair Haven, Connecticut. Designed by sculptor Edward Hamilton, who also created the Amistad Memorial in downtown New Haven, the monument honors the two African American regiments from Connecticut that fought for the Union during the Civil War. On Jan. 29, 1864, Douglass addressed the regiments at their encampment at Grapevine Point, the site of today’s Criscuolo Park.