The southern studies faculty of Mercer University will host an NEH institute for school teachers on Cotton Culture 
in the U.S. South, 1865-1965.
The institute will allow twenty-two teachers of English, history, economics, government, geography, art, and music to learn about the complex social structures of the U.S. South in the crucial yet frequently misunderstood hundred years after the Civil War, a period that included both major social problems and amazing cultural development. An interdisciplinary panel of experts on the South will use the cultivation of cotton—the South’s most significant economic product during this time—as a means to analyze and understand the region’s history, geography, economics, politics, culture, and literature. The institute will meet from June 28 to July 30, 2010.
Macon, Georgia, about an hour's drive south of Atlanta, is an ideal location from which to study the history and culture of cotton. Nicknamed "the market city," it was once a center of cotton commerce and textile production. Workshops will meet on the campus of Mercer University in downtown Macon, and participants will also visit a nineteenth-century plantation, a working cotton farm, the Civil Rights historic district of Atlanta, and the cotton seaport in Savannah.
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For more information about the institute, contact Sarah Gardner, gardner_se@mercer.edu. To apply for the institute, follow the directions on the application page. NEH has extended the postmark deadline for completed applications to March 12, 2010.
