Inventing America: Lowell and the Industrial Revolution

FAIN: BH-231198-15

University of Massachusetts, Lowell (Lowell, MA 01854-3629)
Sheila Kirschbaum (Project Director: February 2015 to May 2017)

Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers on the textile industry in Lowell, Massachusetts, as a case study of early nineteenth-century industrialization.

The Tsongas Industrial History Center, a partnership of UMass Lowell's Graduate School of Education and Lowell National Historical Park, proposes to engage teachers in examining the textile industry as a case study of early 19th-century industrialization. We use the resources of the Park and other cultural/historical sites to address changes in work, economics, society, culture, and the environment between 1820 and 1860. An online follow-up discussion with readings examines culture and immigration, past and present. Lowell, the first planned industrial city in the U.S., formed the template for later industrial cities and provides an ideal setting for historical inquiry. Teachers investigate history where it happened and learn how to teach with primary sources, artifacts, and historic sites in their own communities. The Workshop combines lectures, discussion, hands-on and field investigations, dramatic presentations, and close examination of primary, secondary, and literary sources.