This summer I had the pleasure of attending the Rethinking the Gilded Age and Progressive Era set up by the NEH, Robert Johnston (among others), and the University of Illinois Chicago. It was a wonderful experience and I can't wait to apply for a third NEH program in the future. My first was Chinese Film and Society two years ago and that too was a great program.
As with my first institute I learned many things both from the leaders of the program and the other teachers who were there. We took a number of tours around Chicago labor movement sites from the Pullman Factory grounds to Haymarket Square and the stockyards in S. Chicago. Though too many to list, we had a number of great speakers and readings which lead on to some very interesting discussions about the labor movement and progressive era in US history and which for me made a great connection to the second gilded age that we live in today. I have actually formed a lesson that I will try in the spring of this year in which I posit the place and responsibilities of community, employer, employee, and consumer to each other. It should be a fun lesson as China now has many factory cities which I can use as examples of the extremes employers go to both in their paternalism and in their desire to see a happy workforce as well as the fact that Chinese labor is not allowed to organize (without permission).
I will be looking for the new postings for the summer of 2016, which should be coming some time around December of 2015.
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