-Mark Twain and the "Impolite Nation": Using Twain's Work to Teach About Race in America

FAIN: BH-50165-07

Mark Twain Memorial (Hartford, CT 06105-6400)
Jeffrey L. Nichols (Project Director: March 2006 to May 2008)

Two one-week workshops to be held at Mark Twain's home in Hartford for 100 school teachers to study the treatment of race in Twain's novels and short stories.

The Mark Twain House & Museum will present an educational workshop for teachers, Mark Twain and the "Impolite Nation": Using Twain's Work to Teach About Race in America. Using the landmark Mark Twain House and the museum's unique collections as resources, the workshop will employ Mark Twain's works, and the evolution of his views on issues of race, as tools for examining Twain's era - a complex and pivotal period in American thought and history - as well as the historical background and cultural impact of the institution of slavery and its aftermath. The museum will offer two one-week sessions of the workshop during July 2007; each session will serve forty to fifty teachers.