Click for accessible search Skip Navigation

The Cullman Center Institute for Teachers

Share

Recommend
Email
Print
Share

Illustration by Gary PanterIllustration by Gary PanterThe Cullman Center Institute for Teachers offers two distinct programs for professional development that give teachers an opportunity to enrich their understanding of the humanities and research in one of the world's great libraries. The Institute is located in The New York Public Library's landmark building on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street at The Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.

Our Spring Seminars, which last a day, are free. Breakfast and lunch are included (the appliation deadline for the 2013 Spring Seminars has passed).

Summer Seminars last a week. Participants receive a $300 stipend, all required books and materials, a private office with networked computer at the Cullman Center, and breakfast and lunch each day. There is also an opportunity to receive graduate credit through Adams State College. Click here for details.

Space is limited. Any full-time teacher, school librarian, or administrator is welcome to apply; priority is given to public school teachers in the New York metropolitan area.

Special funding for the Cullman Center's Institute for Teachers is generously provided by Helen and Roger Alcaly and the Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History.

The Cullman Center is made possible by a generous endowment from Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman in honor of Brooke Russell Astor, with major support provided by Mrs. John L. Weinberg, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Estate of Charles J. Liebman, John and Constance Birkelund, The Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, and additional gifts from The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Helen and Roger Alcaly, Mel and Lois Tukman, The Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, The Rona Jaffe Foundation, William W. Karatz, Mary Ellen von der Heyden, Merilee and Roy Bostock, Lybess Sweezy and Ken Miller, and Cullman Center Fellows.

SUMMER SEMINARS 2013

WE ARE NO LONGER ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS FOR OUR 2013 SUMMER SEMINARS. 

Gary Panter Gary Panter

Drawing 101

Monday, July 15, 2013, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

THIS IS A WEEK-LONG SEMINAR (MONDAY JULY 15 - FRIDAY JULY 19)

GARY PANTER, Instructor

This class is designed for beginners, but artists at any skill level are welcome to apply. Our primary focus will be on learning how to draw in a sketchbook. Through simple exercises, we will break down the barrier separating non-drawers from drawers. Each day's draughting will be supplemented with lectures on a variety of topics, such as the history of comics and drawing; 20th century art; the lineage of the line; satire in painting; the dangers of computers; and drawing on location.

Gary Panter is a painter, cartoonist, and designer whose awards include a Chrysler Design Award and also three Emmys for his work as the set designer of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. His work has appeared in Time, The New Yorker, Esquire, Raw, Rolling Stone, Artforum, and Art In America. His graphic novels include Jimbo's Inferno, Jimbo in Purgatory, and Invasion of the Elvis Zombies. At the Cullman Center, Panter is exploring imagery and texts relating to ideas of the afterlife and Paradise, especially as they appear in Dante's Paradiso and Milton's Paradise Regained.
Shimon Dotan Shimon Dotan

Political Cinema and the “Other”

Monday, July 22, 2013, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

THIS IS A WEEK-LONG SEMINAR (MONDAY JULY 22 - FRIDAY JULY 26)

SHIMON DOTAN, Instructor

Representations of the “other” are central to identity. In times of political conflict, our constructs of the “other” become rallying cries. This seminar is designed for teachers interested in contemporary politics, history, filmmaking, and film criticism. We will ask: How do filmmakers fight against or reinforce prevailing representations of an enemy? We will also investigate how the “other” is constructed -- politically, aesthetically, and ethically -- in Battleship Potemkim (Sergei Eisenstein, Soviet Union, 1925); Triumph of the Will; (Leni Riefensthal, Germany, 1934); The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, France, 1966); Taxi to the Dark Side (Alex Gibney, US,  2007); and Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman, Israel, 2008).
 
Shimon Dotan is a film director and screenwriter whose films include Hot House, The Smile of the Lamb, and You Can Thank Me Later. He has won the Special Jury Prize at Sundance, the Silver Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival, and two Israeli Academy Awards. Dotan is a professor at New York University and The New School, where he teaches Political Cinema and Film Directing, respectively. At the Cullman Center, he is working on a script for a feature film about Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism.
 
John Wray John Wray

Inventing Your Voice: A Creative Writing Workshop

Monday, July 29, 2013, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

THIS IS A WEEK-LONG SEMINAR (JULY 29 - AUGUST 2)

JOHN WRAY, Instructor

'Finding your voice' is one of the most daunting challenges confronting any aspiring writer, largely because 'voice' is not so much found as invented. A distinctive, articulate, seductive voice is essential to fiction and non-fiction alike, but each novel or short story or essay has a specific voice—or group of voices—that suit and serve it best. Over the course of our week, we'll dip into the works of some of the great virtuosi of voice, such as Virginia Woolf, Orhan Pamuk, Russell Hoban, and William Faulkner, and create a variety of voices of our own. We each 'contain multitudes,' to paraphrase Walt Whitman; let's see if they can write our fiction for us!
 
John Wray’s novels – The Right Hand of Sleep, Canaan's Tongue, and Lowboy – have won numerous awards. In 2007, Granta included him on its list of best American novelists under the age of 35. He also writes nonfiction for Esquire, Spin, and The New York Times Magazine. At the Cullman Center, he is working on a novel, The Lost Time Accidents, about a century in the life of a family of renegade physicists.