Two one-week Landmarks workshops for fifty community college faculty members to study the national implications of the War of 1812's northwestern frontier.

"The War of 1812 in the Great Lakes and Western Territories" consists of two one-week NEH Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshops held during summer 2012 for fifty community college faculty members on the national implications of the War of 1812's northwestern frontier. The program engages new scholarship on the under-examined War of 1812, now considered of central importance to early American history. In particular, the workshop explores conflicts that emanated from the northwestern borderlands of northern Ohio and southern Michigan, with Native Americans and Europeans threatening to destabilize the nation. Three sites (the River Raisin Battlefield, Fort Meigs, and Perry's Victory and International Peace Monument) anchor the project's regional focus. These are combined with lectures by and discussions with visiting scholars whose complementary expertise allows for a thorough examination of the topic. Alan Taylor (University of California, Davis) and Andrew Cayton (Miami University, Ohio) discuss the war's significance to the nation; David Skags (Bowling Green State University) and Gerard Atloff (National Park Service) treat military and geographic topics; and Gregory Dowd (University of Michigan) and Susan Sleeper-Smith (Michigan State University) address the conflict with Native Americans. Three core books support a number of additional readings: Taylor's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Civil War of 1812; Skaggs and Atloff's A Signal Victory: The Lake Erie Campaign; and Sandy Antal's A Wampum Denied: Proctor's War of 1812, which examines U.S. diplomacy with Native Americans in the Northwest. Attention is given to archival materials as well as to the use of sites in the teaching of history.