Longfellow and the Forging of American Identity

FAIN: ED-50071-03

Maine Humanities Council (Portland, ME 04102-1012)
Charles C. Calhoun (Project Director: October 2002 to December 2005)

A series of seminars designed to engage teachers from Maine in the study of the work and cultural influence of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, followed by the development of interactive curricular resources for the Maine Memory Network.

Longfellow and the Forging of the American Identity is a three-year Exemplary Education Project designed to re-integrate the life and work of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow into the American classroom. Maine teachers will work with scholars (including a Longfellow biographer), curators, archivists, and educational technology specialists in an interdisciplinary, contextual re-interpretation of this quintessential American Victorian. The focus is not only on the poetry but on Longfellow's cultural achievement in creating enduring icons of American identity such as Paul Revere, Evangeline, and Priscilla Alden. The final product will be "Longfellow in the Classroom," and interactive curricular resource that will form a module on the Maine Memory Network site. It will be tested and piloted in Maine and three other states.