The Rochester Reform Trail: Women's Rights, Religion, and Abolition on the Genesee River and the Erie Canal

FAIN: BH-231092-15

SUNY Research Foundation, College at Brockport (Brockport, NY 14420-2997)
Jose R. Torre (Project Director: February 2015 to May 2017)

Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers on the iconic nineteenth-century reform landscape of Rochester, New York.

This workshop will bring together school teachers, public historians, and scholarly experts for study of Rochester's iconic 19th century reform landscape. Through field trips, lectures and discussions, participants will examine Rochester's central role in American history and the legacy it has left on public memory, moments and visual iconography. Teachers will study the words and ideas of celebrated Rochester reformers (including Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, and Charles Finney) while visiting their homes, activist headquarters, business offices and churches. The workshop will explore several broad themes: the economic, social and physical landscape shaping 19th century American reform; the connections between reformer's private and public lives; the role that religion played in expanding reform movements; and the impact of women and African Americans on reform culture both before and after the Civil War.