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Participants in last summer’s NEH workshop “The Most Southern Place on Earth: Music, Culture and History in the Mississippi Delta” on the Mississippi at Mounds Landing. The Mississippi River broke through the levee at this spot in April of 1927, creating the great flood that killed hundreds and inundated the entire lower Mississippi Delta. |
For the second year in a row, Delta State University has received major funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) “Landmarks in American History and Culture” program.
Funding will allow the Delta State Delta Center for Culture and Learning to offer two week-long workshops focusing on the Delta’s rich cultural heritage.
The first workshop will be held the week of June 20 and the second workshop will be held the week of July 11.
Each workshop will serve forty K-12 teachers, who will come from Mississippi and all over the United States. Dr. Luther Brown, Director of the Delta Center for Culture and Learning says “Last year we had almost 300 applications, with participants coming from 42 states. This is a very exciting workshop, and we hope to draw applicants from all of Mississippi and the rest of the country.”
Classroom teachers in public, private, parochial, and charter schools, as well as home-schooling parents are eligible to participate. They will receive a stipend to assist with expenses and gather together with leading humanities scholars, innovative master teachers and Delta State staff to develop powerful lesson plans relating to the Delta’s heritage and the heritage of their own home regions.
The workshops are titled “The Most Southern Place on Earth: Music, Culture and History in the Mississippi Delta.” Participants will travel throughout the Delta as they visit sites where significant events occurred.They will discuss and learn about issues involving civil rights and political leadership, immigrants’ experiences in the Delta, the Blues, the great migration, agriculture, and the Mississippi River, among other things. They will sample Delta foods, visit local museums, and listen to the Blues. Field trips will roam as far as Greenville, Greenwood, Clarksdale and Memphis, with stops in between.
Participants can earn up to six graduate semester hours upon completion of the workshop.
The “Landmarks in American History and Culture” teacher workshops are a major part of the NEH “We the People” program aimed at improving public understanding of significant themes and events in American history and culture. Workshops offered by NEH provide K-12 educators with the opportunity to engage in intensive study and discussion of important topics and issues in American history, while providing them with "hands on" experiences to develop enhanced teaching materials for their classrooms.
The Delta State Delta Center for Culture and Learning promotes the understanding of the heritage of the Mississippi Delta. The Center will be assisted during the workshops by several Delta State faculty members and master teachers from the College of Education, together with faculty from the University of Memphis, the University of Mississippi, Sam Houston State University, and other institutions of higher learning. Local Delta citizens will also tell their own stories and experiences.
There are a total of thirty “Landmarks in American History and Culture” workshops offered during 2010. The topics range from The American Skyscraper, to America’s Industrial Revolution and Henry Ford, with several workshops focusing on the American Revolution or the Civil War. A complete list can be found at http://www.neh.gov/projects/landmarks-school.html.
Last summer was first time that Delta State received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
For more information about the “Landmarks in American History and Culture” workshops, visit the Delta Center’s web site at http://www.blueshighway.org or contact the Delta State Delta Center for Culture and Learning at (662) 846-4311.
