Summer Institutes for Teachers

Jump ahead to

Institute Description| Qualifications|Co-Directors

Description

The Center for American Music, part of the University of Pittsburgh' s Library System, offers Summer Institutes for Teachers biennially.  During this five-week Institute, we expand upon the materials and concepts of the resource guide, exploring topics in American music through the lens of music from two distinct yet complementary angles. First, analysis of popular songs as primary source documents offers fresh material to enrich the understanding of social studies and language arts. Second, field trips and authentic performances offer a uniquely engaging evocation of an historical context. Aided by historians, musicologists, and teaching performers, participants strengthen their skills as historians and develop innovative strategies to integrate music into their teaching.

The 2008 Institute has been designated a We the People Project by the NEH for promoting knowledge and understanding of American History and Culture.

For more information about the Institute, please select one of the topics from the menu on the right.

Qualifications

Full-time teachers in American K-12 schools, whether public, private, or church-affiliated, as well as home-schooling parents, are eligible to apply to seminars and institutes. Americans teaching abroad are also eligible if a majority of the students they teach are American citizens. Librarians and school administrators may also be eligible. First consideration is given to applicants who have not participated in an NEH-supported seminar or institute in the last three years.

Detailed application instructions and further information about eligibility may be found on our 2008 Application page.

If you would like to be added to our mailing list to receive an announce-ment of the next institute, please email Kathy Haines with "NEH Institute" in the subject line.

Institute Co-Directors

Deane Root

Deane is a musicologist, teacher, performer, researcher, author, editor, bibliographer, archivist, librarian, museologist, and administrator for American music. As Director of the Center for American Music and Curator of the Foster Hall Collection at the University of Pittsburgh, Deane has brought one of the largest repositories of musical Americana into the mainstream of academic life through research, teaching, interpretive performance, and conservation of music in the context of its cultural and social roles in the history of the United States of America. Deane is widely known for his work in providing access to information and source materials in American music history. As former chair of the Department of Music at the University of Pittsburgh, Deane has helped promote an integrated curriculum of historical musicology, ethnomusicology, theory and analysis, with solid grounding in music research and bibliography skills.

Mariana Whitmer

Mariana is currently Project Coordinator at the Center for American Music at the University of Pittsburgh, responsible for initiatives related to developing use of the Stephen Foster Collection, bringing American music to scholars and educators. Mariana has consulted on Voices Across Time since early 1999, assisting in the selection of songs, completing the historical research of individual songs, and contributing to the essay and discussion materials. She also has worked with the Department of Education at the University of Pittsburgh in integrating Voices Across Time into the social studies curriculum. Mariana has presented Voices Across Time several times at conferences and seminars. Dedicated to the study of music as it relates to history, she is currently guest editor for a special music issue (July 2005) of the Magazine of History, a publication of the Organization of American Historians.