Two one-week Landmarks workshops for eighty teachers that will use the Hudson River as a focus for the study of nineteenth-century intersections of art, culture, commerce, and nature.

The Hudson River is an American landmark of immeasurable historical depth and significance, and has aptly been called "America's River." The workshops we propose will explore American history and culture of the 19th century by focusing on the Hudson River as a site where art, culture, commerce, and nature collide. On one hand, the River is "conquered" in the 19th century by steam power, the Erie Canal, industrialization, and population growth. On the other, painters such as Thomas Cole and writers such as Washington Irving endowed the River with romantic, transformational power, the power to overcome human force. Each day of our program will include a lecture by a renowned scholar, a site visit, and a workshop with a Master Teacher where participants will work in small groups to develop lesson plans related to their teaching area. The workshops will be appropriate for middle and high school teachers of social studies, history, English, humanities, and environmental studies.

Two one-week workshops for seventy-two school teachers that use the Hudson River for a study of modernization in nineteenth-century America.

This workshop focuses on the Hudson River as a case study of the scope of modernization in nineteenth-century America. By focusing on art, literature, and architecture alongside the developments in commerce, industry, and tourism that emerged on the nineteenth-century Hudson, the workshop reveals the several ways in which Americans navigated the waterway. This approach also brings an interdisciplinary perspective to history and a humanities focus to environmental studies. Each day allows for a specific topic with lectures, discussions, readings, and site-based activities tied to a region of the river. Participants begin by considering the mouth of the Hudson as an estuary and economic gateway; they survey New York Harbor by boat, walk the commercial district of Wall Street, and read Walt Whitman's poetry at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. Farther up river, they discuss short stories by Washington Irving, visit his home, Sunnyside, and compare this modest structure to Lyndhurst, its Gilded Age neighbor and home of financier Jay Gould. They study the development of the steamboat and Erie Canal for the purpose of industry and commerce, and the Hudson River School paintings of Thomas Cole as romantic depictions of nature. A session on "Race, Labor, and the Landscape" illuminates the stories of African Americans in the Hudson River Valley. Finally, an afternoon boat trip--enhanced by readings in period guidebooks--enables participants to interpret the river's dramatic geology, iconic vistas, and environmental change through a nineteenth-century lens. Project directors Stephen P. Rice and Meredith Davis are scholars of American studies and art history, respectively. Their expertise is supplemented by Elizabeth Hutchinson (art history, Columbia University), Judith Richardson (English and American studies, Stanford University), Myra Young Armstead (history and Africana studies, Bard College), Thomas Wermuth (history, Marist College and Director of the Hudson River Valley Institute), and Stephen Stanne (Hudson River Estuary Program, Cornell University). In addition to place-based writing exercises, a session entitled "Teaching Your Place" assists teachers in translating the Hudson River workshop to other local sites.

P.I. edited Washington Irving's Astoria as part of The Complete Works of Washington Irving, and is now editing James Fenimore Cooper's The Pathfinder as part of a ten-volume series of Cooper's best-known works, scheduled to be published by the State University of New York Press. P.I. will collate all available forms of the work, establish a definitive reading text which comes closest to the author's intentions, write a historical essay and a textual essay, provide annotations for the text, and compose various textual lists. Research and editing project has a direct relationship to the bicentennial observance of the American Revolution. The Pathfinder (1840) illustrates the roots of national character as well as tendencies of American destiny.

Planning for public programs, including support for research, concept design, audience evaluation, and design workshops exploring the stories and life of Washington Irving at his home.

HHV seeks funding for a public programming initiative that will make a meaningful connection between the tales of Washington Irving and the art of American storytelling by transforming the visitor experience at Irving's home Sunnyside. The humanities themes include 1) stories play an essential role in the American experience, 2) through his Hudson River Valley stories, Irving made an essential contribution to the development of regional literature in the United State, and 3) Washington Irving fashioned Sunnyside, his riverfront estate, to embody his creative spirit. The project incorporates public programs, both onsite and online, for a diverse audience including culture-seekers, families, teachers, and students.

To produce two slide-tape orientation programs for historic Sunnyside, home of Washington Irving.

To complete The Complete Works of Washington Irving in 27 volumes, primarily for transcribing and annotation for the final volumes of Irving's letters.

To complete The Complete Works of Washington Irving in 27 volumes, primarily for transcribing and annotation for the final volumes of Irving's letters.

To support publication of the final two volumes of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WASHINGTON IRVING. The final volumes contain Irving's letters, which have rarely been published and only in fragmented form.

To support publication of the final two volumes of journals and notebooks in The Complete Works of Washington Irving.