Frontier Illinois: Formation, Context, and Influence

FAIN: FV-50184-08

Illinois College (Jacksonville, IL 62650-2299)
James Davis (Project Director: March 2008 to February 2011)

A five-week seminar for fifteen school teachers on the development of the U.S. frontier in the greater Illinois region.

Illinois College requests a $102,734 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to fund an intensive, highly interdisciplinary, residential five-week Summer Seminar on "Frontier History: Formation, Context, and Influence." Dr. James E. Davis will direct the Summer Seminar at Illinois College, in Jacksonville, Illinois, where he has taught history and geography since 1971. The Seminar will take place from Sunday, June 28, 2009, through Saturday, August 1, 2009. It has two goals: first, to introduce teachers to basic understandings of the frontier in the greater Illinois region to about 1860 (and to understandings of the larger national frontier); and second, to introduce participants to ways of learning and teaching about the frontier. Participants will develop Frontier Units for use in their classrooms and to disseminate and share with their Seminar colleagues and with peer teachers in their home school districts.