2001 Fulbright Summer Institute in American Studies for University Educators

Vision and Purpose of the Summer Institute

        This Institute presents human migration along waterways as a key to understanding the cultural, political, and social development of the USA and the problems and rewards of a diverse society. Four waterways, representative but by no means all encompassing, provide the Institute's structure: the Atlantic, the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River, and the Pacific. Each waterway carried people--Indians, Europeans, Africans, and Asians--at first into North America and then to various points on the land. Those migrants created settlements as diverse as the ancient Mississippi city Cahokia, the Atlantic seaboard's plantations and colonial cities, the great lakefront cities like Chicago, and the late-twentieth-century multicultural metropolises like Los Angeles and New York. In moving along waterways and establishing themselves in North America, migrants, pioneers, laborers, and citizens created sites that were in various ways responses to their access to a river, lake, or sea. But also on waterways developed some of the salient features of American culture: the encounters among peoples of different races, ethnicities, and nationalities; the conflict between colonials and Europeans over the nature of political institutions; the initial Americanization of political institutions; the reform movements of the antebellum era; the growth of an industrial nation requiring that labor, raw materials, and finished goods move efficiently to and from factories; and the development of a nation that is at once increasingly urban, committed to political equality across ethnic, gender, and race lines, and itself the postindustrial leader of the global economy. Water has long been symbolic in American life, too, whether through baptism, or the retention of West African water spirits, or the "green" sense that uncorrupted nature is essential to the human spirit. Intended to assist international faculty by being representative and suggestive, not comprehensive, this Institute will range from social history issues like migration, mortality, and settlement, to cultural and political developments in constitutionalism, reform, religion, and literature, to late-twentieth-century challenges in education and civic life. In general, the Institute's organizers see it as adding to standard themes in American history an emphasis on the fundamental qualities of water and human movement and on the religious and artistic dimensions of migration, settlement, and nation-building in the USA.Program Activities
        The 2001 Summer Institute in the Study of the U.S. will consist of a four-week academic residency component from June 30-June 29 and a two-week study tour from July 29-August 12.  Each week of the InstituteÆs four-week academic residency component will focus on a specific set of waterways within four regional contexts: Atlantic Waterways to North America; the Great Lakes and Northern Passages into the American Heartland; Mississippi Passages between North and South; and Pacific Shores or Pacific Rim.  Lecturers from various departments and programs in the university will discuss the salient features of American culture along these waterways and as they developed over time. Some of the features we will include are the encounters among peoples of different races, ethnicities, and nationalities, the conflict between colonials and Europeans over the nature of political institutions, the initial Americanization of political institutions, the reform movements of the antebellum era, the growth of the industrial nation requiring that labor, raw materials, and finished goods move efficiently to and from factories, and the development of a nation that is at once increasingly urban, committed to political equality across ethnic, gender, and race lines, and itself the postindustrial leader of the global economy.  The Institute will also provide optional trips to regional sites of significance to the theme of migration along waterways, including a weekend along the Chicago River, a visit to the Michigan Maritime Museum, an afternoon at an Ojibwa pottery studio, and a canoe trip down the Kalamazoo River.
        The two-week study tour will complement the residency component by taking the participants through two of the four regions, retracing migration routes along the Great Lakes, the Erie Canal, the Hudson River Valley, and the Atlantic Seaboard. Visits to such places as the Henry Ford Museum, Seneca Falls, Ellis Island, Harlem, Independence Hall, Williamsburg, and the Mall in Washington DC will highlight the diverse nature and historical development of American culture. Taken together, all the activities of the Institute will prepare participants to design or re-design American Studies classes and curricula at their home institutions. (For details, please see attached Academic Program Session Schedule.)

Additional Western Michigan University Faculty

Dr. Tom Bailey, Department of English
Dr. Jose Brandao, Department of History
Dr. Michael Chiarappa, Department of History
Dr. Kevin Corder, Department of Political Science
Dr. William Cremin, Department of Anthropology
Dr. Kenneth Dahlberg, Director of Environmental Studies
Dr. Douglas Davidson, Department of Sociology
Dr. David Dickason, Department of Geography
Dr. Howard Dooley, Director of International Affairs
John Fraire, Dean of Admissions
Dr. Nora Faires, Department of History
Dr. David Issacson, Professor, Reference Librarian, Waldo Library
Dr. Vyacheslav Karpov, Department of Sociology
Dr. Elena Lisovskaya, Departments of Education and Professional Development
Dr. Irma Lopez, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures
Dr. Vin Lyon-Callo, Department of Anthropology
Dr. Michael Nassaney, Department of Anthropology
Dr. Neil Pinney, Department of Political Science
Dr. Carolyn Podruchny, Departments of History and American Studies
Dr. Lawrence Potter, Department of Black Americana Studies
Dr. Gwen Raaberg, Director of Center for Women's Studies
Dr. Robert Ricci, Department of Music
Dr. Chester B. Rogers, Department of Political Science
Dr. William Santiago Valles, Director, Lewis Walker Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnic Relations
Dr. Peter Schmitt, Department of History
Dr. Greg Smith, Department of English
Dr. Kristin Szylvian, Department of History and Director of Maritime Museum
Dr. Gwen Tarbox, Department of English
Dr. Von Washington, Department of Theatre, Director of Black Theatre
Dr. Nicolas Witschi, Department of English
 

Visiting Scholars from Other Institutions

Dr. Gladys Cardiff, Department of English, Oakland University,  Native American Poet
Dr. Lisa DuRose, Minnesota at Inver Hills College
Ed Gray, Native American Metalworker and Potter
Cybelle Shattuck, ABD., Religious Studies, UC Santa Barbara, specialist in Religions of South Asia