Past Institutes

Westward Expansion

In February 2014, Humanities Texas held three one-day workshops in Edinburg, Corpus Christi, and San Antonio focusing on the westward expansion of the United States in the nineteenth century.

Curriculum

Topics addressed included Manifest Destiny, the Mexican War, Native American resistance, and the revolutions in transportation and industry that took place during this period.

153 teachers attended the workshops. The workshops emphasized close interaction with scholars, the examination of primary sources, and the development of effective pedagogical strategies and engaging assignments and activities. Content was aligned with the secondary social studies TEKS, with particular emphasis on the eighth-grade U.S. history curriculum. Teachers received books and other instructional materials and were trained in the examination and interpretation of primary sources.

Faculty

Workshop faculty included Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Daniel Walker Howe (University of California at Los Angeles), Daniel Feller (University of Tennessee), John L. Larson (Purdue University), Thomas Britten (The University of Texas at Brownsville), and Erika Bsumek (The University of Texas at Austin).

Program resources

Our February 2014 newsletter included a slideshow of images from the workshop.

Locations and schedules

The workshop overviews detail each program's schedule and participants.

Sponsors

These workshops were made possible with major funding from the State of Texas, with ongoing support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Humanities Texas thanks ESC1, ESC2, and the Witte Museum for hosting the programs.