Abolitionism, Women’s Rights, and Religious Revivalism on the Rochester Reform Trail

FAIN: BH-50399-10

RIT (Rochester, NY 14623-5698)
Richard S. Newman (Project Director: March 2010 to April 2016)
Jose R. Torre (Co Project Director: March 2010 to April 2016)

Two one-week Landmarks workshops for eighty school teachers to examine Rochester's central role in American reform history through its iconic landmark geography.

This workshop will bring together schoolteachers, public historians, and scholarly experts for study of Rochester’s iconic 19th century reform landscape. Through field trips, lectures, and discussions, participants will examine Rochester’s central role in American history and the legacy it has left on public memory, monuments, and visual iconography. Teachers will study the words and ideas of celebrated Rochester reformers (including Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, and Charles Finney) while visiting their homes, activist headquarters, business offices, and churches. The workshop will explore several broad themes: the economic, social and physical landscapes shaping 19th century American reform; the connections between reformers’ private and public lives; the role that religion played in expanding reform movements; and the impact of women and African Americans on reform culture both before and after the Civil War.