Cullman Center Institute for Teachers Past Programs
The Cullman Center Institute for Teachers offers professional development that gives teachers an opportunity to enrich their understanding of history and literature and to learn about doing 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. Listed below are some of our past seminars.
Past Seminars
Ayana Mathis
And Then What Happened?: On The Art of Storytelling with Ayana Mathis, July 18-22, 2022
In E.M. Forster’s seminal book on craft, Aspects of the Novel, he writes, “And now the story can be defined… Qua story, it can only have one merit: that of making the audience want to know what happens next. And conversely it can only have one fault: that of making the audience not want to know what happens next.” There must be more to it than that! Surely, modern literature is more sophisticated than a simple matter of suspense. It is true that literature has loftier pursuits, but the fact remains that without suspense, fiction falls flat. To tell a story, to spin a yarn, to keep our reader turning pages into the wee hours, remains the writer’s greatest goal. It is through storytelling that we smuggle in, like a Trojan horse, our work’s other elements: artistry, theme, aesthetics, and ideas. READ MORE
Gilbert King
Dawn of a New America: Race, Justice, Law, and Media in the Pre-Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1955 with Gilbert King, July 11-15, 2022
This workshop will explore the dynamic changes that took place in America following World War II, when the nation was forced to grapple with the glaring contradictions between justice and equality, and the discriminatory treatment of its minority citizens. In this seminar, we will begin by talking about the hundreds of thousands of African-American servicemen who, after fighting for freedom and democracy abroad, returned to the Jim Crow South, only to find themselves once again living as second class citizens. We’ll explore the political forces at play, the rebirth of the KKK, and the role that White Citizens Councils played in the resistance to racial change in the aftermath of Brown v Board and the Court’s mandated desegregation of public schools. We’ll also examine the role that civil rights lawyers played in engineering the greatest social transformation in America since the Reconstruction era. READ MORE
Autobiography and History: A Non-Fiction Writing Workshop with Martha Hodes, July 22–26
Making Strange—Defamiliarizing a Familiar World: A Creative Writing Workshop with Marisa Silver, July 15–19
What We Remember: A Creative Writing Workshop with Angela Flournoy, July 23-27
Left and Right in American History with Kim Phillips-Fein, July 16-20
The Intimacies of Racial Slavery, July 31-August 4
The Lives of Others: a Fiction Writing Workshop, July 17-21
Imagining Nature in the Age of Discoveries, July 25 - 29
The Reporter and the Story: A Workshop in Journalism, July 18 - 22
How to Forget How to Write Fiction: A Creative Writing Workshop, July 11 - 15
A Primer on Brazil: Global Giant with Larry Rohter
A History of Forgery with Nick Wilding
Gatsby’s Inglorious World of Inequality with Shamus Khan
The Literature of Fact: A Non-Fiction Writing Workshop with Yasmine El Rashidi
The Salem Witch Trials: Making Documents Talk with Stacy Schiff
The View from the Kitchen with Laura Shapiro
Poetry as Translation: A Creative Writing Workshop with Vivek Narayanan
Stories from Poems: A Creative Writing Workshop with Alejandro Zambra
Writing about Victims: A Journalism Workshop with Carlos Dada
Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Its Historical Context with Peter Holquist
Deconstructing Voice: A Creative Writing Workshop with Ayana Mathis
Finding a Voice: A Creative Writing Workshop with Jordi Puntí
Time Travel: Writing Memory and the Past with Ayana Mathis
Gang Warfare in Central America with Carlos Dada
King Lear: Catastrophe as a Metaphor with Gerard Passannante
Using Art to Study History: Medieval Europe with Sara Lipton
Drop Dead: The Fiscal Crisis of 1975 and the Transformation of New York City with Kim Phillips-Fein
A New Perspective on the Declaration of Independence with Steven Pincus
Two Ways of Looking at Elizabeth Bishop with Megan Marshall and Kenneth Gross
The First Person: A Creative Writing Workshop with Justin Torres
Made in America: Viewing our Built Environments as Primary Documents with Elizabeth Blackmar
Making the Supernatural Real: A Creative Writing Workshop in Fiction with Téa Obreht
Slow Looking: A Nonfiction Writing Workshop with Graciela Mochkofsky
Inventing Your Voice: A Creative Writing Workshop
THIS IS A WEEK-LONG SEMINAR (JULY 29 - AUGUST 2)
JOHN WRAY, Instructor READ MORE ›
'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 VirginiaPolitical Cinema and the “Other”
THIS IS A WEEK-LONG SEMINAR (MONDAY JULY 22 - FRIDAY JULY 26)
SHIMON DOTAN, Instructor READ MORE ›
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” isDrawing 101
THIS IS A WEEK-LONG SEMINAR (MONDAY JULY 15 - FRIDAY JULY 19)
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; READ MORE ›
Memoir: Turning Your Life into a Story
This seminar is during spring break
SAЇD SAYRAFIEZADEH, Instructor
How exactly do you take those raw, unwieldy—often embarrassing—personal experiences (also known as your life) and fashion a compelling narrative? By studying the various strategies that established writers such as Tobias Wolff and A. M. Homes have employed in writing memoir, we will explore the genre in relation to traditional storytelling—character, plot, arc, and resolution. And we’ll ask the essential question: does READ MORE ›
Drawing for Beginners
This seminar is during spring break
GARY PANTER, Instructor
Starting a sketchbook can seem intimidating. This workshop will address the activity of regularly drawing in a sketchbook. People at any skill level will benefit from this workshop, but it is aimed at those who don’t draw but would like to. Participants will do easy, satisfying exercises designed for the beginner. Bring in a favorite poem or two — at the end of the workshop you’ll draw illustrations for the poems.
Gary Panter is a painter, READ MORE ›
Anatomy of a Film: The Battle of Algiers
SHIMON DOTAN, Instructor
This seminar, helpful for global history teachers as well as any teacher who uses film in the classroom, looks closely at one of the most influential political films in history. The Battle of Algiers (1966), by Gillo Pontecorvo, recreates the Algerian struggle for independence from the French in the 1950s. Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range, women plant bombs in cafés, and French soldiers resort to torture to break the will of the insurgents. The film is a case study in READ MORE ›
Camels, Rhinos, and Armadillos: Picturing the World in the Age of Discoveries
DÁNIEL MARGÓCSY, Instructor
How did Europeans make sense of the expanding globe in the Age of Discoveries? This seminar explores the impact of the printing revolution on Europeans’ perceptions of America, Africa, and Asia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We will examine how, in the absence of first-hand evidence, Europeans attempted to make sense of the contradictory accounts of travelers. And we will look at early maps, broadsheets, paintings, and printed texts to see how a highly stereotypical READ MORE ›
The Writer and the Editor
JAMES RYERSON, Instructor
This seminar, of interest to economics, social studies, and English teachers, presents a case study of the editing of a feature article in The New York Times Magazine. Before the seminar, participants will read both the first draft and the final version of the article, a profile by Stephen Mihm about the economist, Nouriel Roubini. During the morning seminar, the group will discuss why the piece was assigned, what the reporting challenges were, and how the writer and editor worked READ MORE ›
Liberating Constraints: A Creative Writing Workshop
THIS IS A WEEK-LONG SEMINAR (MONDAY JULY 30 - FRIDAY AUGUST 3)
RIVKA GALCHEN, Instructor
Shakespeare wrote soliloquies in iambic pentameter; Freud composed some of the 20th century’s best writing in the form of medical case histories; Elvis turned gospel into rock ’n roll; and Dr. Seuss wrote Green Eggs and Ham on a bet that he could write a book using just fifty different words. A narrow passage allows the wind to whistle-- at least sometimes! We’ll read texts by Kobo Abe, Roberto Bolaño, Anthony Burgess, and others, READ MORE ›
Writing Food: A Writing Workshop in Creative Non-Fiction
THIS IS A WEEK-LONG SEMINAR (MONDAY JULY 23 - FRIDAY JULY 27)
LAURA SHAPIRO, Instructor
A wide range of literary genres is open to writers who are deeply curious about food and who find it a peerless– in fact, irresistible – window onto history, experience, and character. This seminar will be held in conjunction with “Lunch Hour: NYC,” a major exhibition of food-related items from the Library’s collections, and will examine the work of such influential culinary storytellers as MFK Fisher, Anthony Bourdain, and Laurie READ MORE ›
Black Bohemia: Poetry, Painting and Jazz on the Lower East Side, 1955-1965
THIS IS A WEEK-LONG SEMINAR (MONDAY JULY 16 - FRIDAY JULY 20)
ADAM SHATZ, Instructor
From the late 1950s through the mid-1960s, New York below 14th Street was home to a thriving -- and increasingly politicized -- black bohemian scene. Black writers, painters, and jazz musicians moved downtown in search of cheaper rents and a more tolerant racial atmosphere, and were soon mixing with their white counterparts in bookshops, taverns, and jazz clubs. By 1965, the scene had imploded, with the assassination of Malcolm X and the rise of black nationalism. READ MORE ›
Text and Image Workshop (spring break)
BEN KATCHOR, Instructor
Through a series of writing and drawing exercises, we will explore the possibilities of expression that arise when text and image are combined on the page. Participants will discover and amplify, through their writing, the stories suggested by their drawings, and analyze, through their drawing, the descriptive passages in their written texts. No previous drawing experience is necessary, but everyone will be asked to make the attempt.
Ben Katchor’s latest graphic novel is The Cardboard Valise. The READ MORE ›
Being Discovered: Native Americans and Henry Hudson
EVAN HAEFELI, Instructor
Using the famous case of Henry Hudson’s ‘discovery of New York,’ the seminar will reflect on this crucial moment in American history. We will use primary and secondary sources, both European and indigenous, to build perspectives on this foundational experience and illustrate how interpretations of the past belong to our present.
Evan Haefeli teaches history at Columbia READ MORE ›
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
DARRYL PINCKNEY, Instructor
The Autobiography of Malcolm X has surprisingly wide appeal as a coming-of-age story, perhaps because of its message of spiritual growth and intellectual change. But Malcolm X also became an icon of militant defiance. How can his book represent such a contradictory legacy? What about this controversial tale continues to fascinate? What would young women find in it? Does it carry the same message for black youth as for white?
An essayist and novelist, Darryl Pinckney is the author of the novel High Cotton and Out READ MORE ›
Gatsby's Inglorious World
SHAMUS KHAN, Instructor
Relevant for history as well as English teachers, this seminar will focus on the social world portrayed in The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald set his novel at the end of the Gilded Age, a time of staggering new wealth, staunchly-held prejudices, deep underlying inequalities, and a heady sense of promise. Will the bubble of the 1920s collapse? Will anything ultimately change?
The author of Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School, Shamus Khan teaches sociology at READ MORE ›
LeRoi Jones and the Lower East Side, 1955-1965 (winter break)
ADAM SHATZ, Instructor
As a prominent poet, critic, essayist, playwright, and editor, LeRoi Jones (later known as Amiri Baraka), bridged the worlds of the Beats, the New York School, and avant-garde jazz, and did more than anyone to define the new black aesthetic. Readings will include several essays and poems as well as Jones’s short play, Dutchman. Seminar participants will also listen to samples of music by jazz artists who were close to Jones, and look at paintings by Bob Thompson, who documented that world READ MORE ›
Weird Love Stories: A Creative Writing Workshop
CHRIS ADRIAN, Instructor
This workshop will examine the unconventional language used in a number of stories, including short fiction by Donald Barthelme and Judy Budnitz, to create a drama of romantic attachment that resists and overcomes cliché. Participants will also engage in a writing exercise that incorporates some of these elements to produce an affecting piece of writing about love.
Chris Adrian is the author of three novels – The Great Night, Gob's Grief, and The Children's Hospital – and a collection of READ MORE ›
Flaws in the Texture of Life Feeling, Imagery, and Weirdness in the Short Story with Mary Gaitskill
Mary Gaitskill, one of America’s master short story writers, leads a seminar on four brilliant stories: The 5:48 by John Cheever; Vandals by Alice Munro; Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor; and The End of FIRPO in the World by George Saunders. The class will discuss each work's apparent theme, style, and representation of character, and will pay special attention to the ways writers use words to create non-verbal experience through which readers sense the hidden and irrational READ MORE ›