Picturing America: Principled Dissent and Democratic Practice

FAIN: AP-50044-10

University of Washington (Seattle, WA 98195-1016)
Linda Watts (Project Director: October 2009 to November 2011)

A two-day summer conference with a follow-up meeting for seventy-five middle and high school U.S. history and government teachers to link art works in Picturing America to themes of democratic participation.

Different Drumbeats: Art, Principled Dissent, and Democratic Practice presents a professional-development conference for teachers of American history to learn to integrate the study of Picturing America images into academic subjects. Employing a dynamic Seattle-area academic and teaching partnership, our project elaborates on Picturing America's democracy theme and focuses on the concept of principled dissent as a core democratic value. This theme, combined with visual thinking methods of exploring art works, will help teachers link Picturing America's masterpieces to their history curriculum, content standards, and individual responsibilities for teaching civic, democratic participation. We will innovatively use the Picturing America images to support and illustrate historical concepts during a two-day summer conference with a third follow-up day in the fall for up to 75 teachers.