The Hermitage, Andrew Jackson, and America 1801-1861

FAIN: BH-50309-09

Middle Tennessee State University (Murfreesboro, TN 37132-0001)
Janice M. Leone (Project Director: March 2009 to June 2011)

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

"The Hermitage, Andrew Jackson, and America 1801-1861" 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:-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