Making Sense of 1989

FAIN: FV-50152-07

George Mason University (Fairfax, VA 22030-4444)
Theodore Mills Kelly (Project Director: March 2007 to September 2009)

A two-week seminar for fifteen high school history teachers on the events of 1989 that prefigured the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the Tiananmen student uprising in China.

This seminar is designed for high school history teachers who want to deepen their understanding of the momentous events of 1989 in Eastern Europe and China, including the collapse of the communist regimes in Europe, the failure of the democracy movement on Tiananmen Square, and the subsequent end of the Cold War. The seminar will blend sessions on historical content, conducted by leading experts in the field, with a focus on historical thinking and how it does and does not happen in our classrooms (and why). In addition to learning about the history and scholarship of 1989 and its aftermath, participants in the seminar will create Primary Source Activities and will preview the new web resource, Making the History of 1989 (http://chnm.gmu.edu/1989, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities).