Inventing America: Lowell and the Industrial Revolution

FAIN: BH-50402-10

University of Massachusetts, Lowell (Lowell, MA 01854-3629)
Sheila Kirschbaum (Project Director: March 2010 to April 2014)

Two one-week Landmarks workshops for eighty 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 unique resources of the Park and other cultural/historical sites to address changes in work, economics, society, culture, and the environment between 1820 and 1860. On-line follow-up classes examine the meaning of slavery in northern textile cities and cultural issues/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 training for teachers. Teachers experience history where it happened and learn how to teach with historic sites in their communities. The Workshop combines lectures and discussion, field investigations, primary and secondary materials, and historical fiction