Humanities and Social Sciences Library > Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers

The 2008 Summer Seminars
for
High School Teachers

“In all the years of teaching, I never had my own classroom. For a week at the Cullman Center, I had my own office with a computer. This week was a luxurious exercise in learning with the finest people and research materials. I had forgotten the passion and the joy that learning gives.”

The Summer Seminars program at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers offers teachers the chance to spend a week enriching their understanding of history, literature, and research in one of the world’s greatest libraries. The Cullman Center, located in The New York Public Library’s landmark building on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, is the setting for a series of stimulating, informal daily seminars led by some of the world’s finest writers, literary critics, and historians. Participants will also learn how to use the extraordinary resources of the Library and be given time to do their own research and writing in a congenial setting.

Amenities provided for Seminar participants include:

A $300 stipend

All required books and course materials

Use of a private office (with networked computer)

Catered breakfasts and lunches during the Seminar week

The Cullman Center’s Seminars are limited to fourteen participants each. High school English teachers, history teachers, librarians, and administrators are invited to apply.

The 2008 Courses

Reading to Write: A Creative Writing Workshop
Monday, July 21 to Friday, July 25
“ The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading,” wrote Samuel Johnson, “...a man will turn over half a library to make one book.” This course will use close readings of novels and short stories to examine the craftsmanship choices authors make – about character, dialogue, voice, description, and tone. The instructor will assign daily writing exercises and some library research. Participants may bring work-in-progress to the class, although applicants need not have manuscripts – only an interest in writing fiction. Readings will focus on short excerpts of work by Jean Rhys, Ralph Ellison, Edith Wharton, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and others.

Jennifer Egan, Instructor, is the author of three novels, The Invisible Circus, Look at Me (which was a finalist for the National Book Award), and The Keep, as well as a short story collection, Emerald City. Her short fiction has been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s, and McSweeney’s, among other magazines. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Also a journalist, she writes frequently for The New York Times Magazine.

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Slavery, Emancipation, and the Slave Narratives
Monday, July 28 to Friday, August 1
The slave narrative is a complex and rewarding genre, of interest to both English and history teachers, and one that encompasses biography, fiction, and autobiography. Before the Civil War approximately 65 slave narratives were published, including now-classic indictments of slavery by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Solomon Northup, and William Wells Brown.
In striking contrast, the narratives written after the war, by Booker T. Washington and others, focus on the writer’s triumphs over the past and visions of a more prosperous future. We will study ante- and postbellum narratives, as well as secondary readings, to better comprehend the lived experience of slaves in the transition from bondage to freedom.

David W. Blight, Instructor, is Class of 1954 Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. His books include Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, which received seven book awards, including the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize; Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory, and the American Civil War; Frederick Douglass’s Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee; and, most recently, A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom.

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, Mel and Lois Tukman, John and Constance Birkelund, The Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, and additional gifts from The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Helen and Roger Alcaly, The Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, William W. Karatz, The Achelis and Bodman Foundations, and Lybess Sweezy and Ken Miller.