The Hermitage, Andrew Jackson, and America 1801-1861

FAIN: BH-50206-07

Middle Tennessee State University (Murfreesboro, TN 37132-0001)
Janice M. Leone (Project Director: March 2007 to September 2012)

Two one-week workshops for 80 school teachers held at The Hermitage, Andrew Jackson's home, on major themes in nineteenth-century American history.

This project will examine the growing body of humanities scholarship on the early nineteenth century. Each workshop will combine classroom and field studies, including archaeology. Participants will use as primary source evidence a variety of documents from the 1801-1861 time period, the objects in The Hermitage's collections, the books the Jackson family owned, the archaeological remains left behind by the enslaved black families, the architecture, and the cultural landscape to examine six interpretive themes. Themes include: * Growing Democracy * Cotton Economy and Slavery * Indians and Westward Expansion * Reform and Religion * Women's Lives in a Changing America * Developing a Distinct American Material Culture