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This spring, Humanities Texas will hold professional development workshops throughout the state for Texas social studies and language arts teachers.

Slavery, Secession, the Civil War, and Reconstruction

In February 2016, Humanities Texas will hold five one-day teacher workshops focusing on slavery, secession, the Civil War, and Reconstruction in Corpus Christi, Edinburg, Lubbock, San Angelo, and San Antonio. Workshop faculty includes Michael Les Benedict (The Ohio State University), Albert S. Broussard (Texas A&M University), Daniel Feller (the University of Tennessee), and Jennifer Weber (the University of Kansas).

Teaching and Understanding the Short Story

On February 19, 2016, Humanities Texas will hold a one-day workshop in Austin introducing strategies for teaching and understanding short fiction at the secondary level. Writers to be covered include Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Alice Walker, Junot Díaz, and other twentieth- and twenty-first-century practitioners of the genre. Workshop faculty includes Oscar Casares and James H. Cox (The University of Texas at Austin), Chitra Divakaruni (University of Houston), and Katherine Henninger (Louisiana State University).

Teaching Shakespeare

On February 26, 2016, Humanities Texas will hold a workshop in Fort Worth for secondary-level language arts teachers on teaching the plays of William Shakespeare. Faculty lectures will address the historical and cultural contexts of Shakespeare's works, approaches to commonly taught comedies and tragedies, and teaching using performance-based strategies. The workshop faculty includes J. Dennis Huston (Rice University), and Paul Sullivan, Elizabeth Richmond-Garza, and John Rumrich of The University of Texas at Austin.

Teachers at all workshops will receive books and other instructional materials and be trained in the examination and interpretation of primary sources. Content at all of our spring workshops will be aligned with the TEKS. For details on eligibility, substitute and travel reimbursements, and venues or to apply online, visit the Upcoming Institutes page on the Humanities Texas website.

Inauguration of President Lincoln, 1861. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.
Title page of Mr. William Shakespeares comedies, histories, & tragedies with copper engraving of the author by Martin Droeshout. Folger Shakespeare Library Digital Image Collection.