Social Movements and Reform in Industrializing America: The Lowell Experience
FAIN: ES-256882-17
University of Massachusetts, Lowell (Lowell, MA 01854-3629)
Sheila Kirschbaum (Project Director: March 2017 to March 2022)
Two one-week institutes for seventy-two school
teachers on the textile industry in Lowell, Massachusetts, as a case study of
early 19th-century industrialization and reform.
The Tsongas Industrial History Center, a partnership of UMass Lowell's Graduate School of Education and Lowell National Historical Park, proposes to engage educators in a study of Lowell's textile industry as a case study of early 19th-century industrialization and reform. We use the resources of the Park and other cultural/historical sites to address changes in work, society, culture, and the environment between 1820 and 1860, as well as subsequent reform activity related to labor, women's rights, and slavery. Lowell, the first planned industrial city in the U.S., formed the template for later industrial cities and provides an ideal setting for historical inquiry. Educators investigate history where it happened and learn how to teach with primary sources, artifacts, and historic sites in their own communities. The institute combines lectures, discussion, hands-on and field investigations, dramatic presentations, and close examination of primary, secondary, and literary sources.