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The Harvard University South Asia Institute (SAI) engages faculty and students through interdisciplinary programs to advance and deepen the teaching and research on global issues relevant to South Asia. With offices in Delhi, Dhaka, Karachi and Mumbai, SAI aims to be a catalyst and bridge between Harvard faculty and students and the region. The South Asia Institute's goals are to: Facilitate scholarly exchanges among Harvard faculty and students, international South Asia specialists, visiting academics, and public figures from South Asia. Sponsor lectures and conferences at Harvard and in the region by distinguished academic, governmental, and business leaders whose work contributes to a better understanding of the challenges facing South Asia. Support Harvard students with grants for language study, research, and internships in-region. Bring knowledge from South Asia to Harvard by supporting faculty and students with grants for research, study, and service learning. Build a community of stakeholders committed to building scholarship on South Asia at Harvard and in-region.

NYT's Celia Dugger examines the quality of education for South Africa's majority black population. 15 years after the election of Nelson Mandela and the official end to apartheid, the nation's school system remains a bastion of inequality.

Apparently yesterday was World Teacher's Day. So foremost, thank you Professor Lawrence for being such a great teacher! And here is a film about South Africa that they are screening for free online this week. It's about high-stakes testing in South Africa.

As she reads this sheepishly...

Youtube Playlist Learn about the political, social, and economic changes in the Union and the Confederacy and the Civil War's long-term economic and intellectual impact. In The Unfinished Revolution: Reconstruction and After, 1865-1890, Professor Eric Foner examines the pivotal but misunderstood era of Reconstruction that followed the Civil War, the first effort in American history to construct an interracial democracy. Beginning with a discussion of the dramatic change in historians' interpretations of the period in the last two generations, Foner goes on to discuss how Reconstruction turned on issues of continued relevance today. Among these are: who is an American citizen and what are citizens' rights; what is the relationship between political and economic freedom; which has the primary responsibility for protecting Americans' rights - the federal or state governments; and how should public authorities respond to episodes of terrorism? The course explores the rewriting of the laws and Constitution to incorporate the principle of equality regardless of race; the accomplishments and failings of Reconstruction governments in the South; the reasons for violent opposition in the South and for the northern retreat from Reconstruction; and the consolidation at the end of the 19th century of a new system of white supremacy. This course is part of the series, The Civil War and Reconstruction, which introduces students to the most pivotal era in American history. The Civil War transformed the nation by eliminating the threat of secession and destroying the institution of slavery. It raised questions that remain central to our understanding of ourselves as a people and a nation - the balance of power between local and national authority, the boundaries of citizenship, and the meanings of freedom and equality. The series will examine the causes of the war, the road to secession, the conduct of the Civil War, the coming of emancipation, and the struggle after the wa

Compare North and South states on interactive maps to identify the differences between free and slave populations before the Civil War. Also includes discussion questions.

Youth for Human Rights International (YHRI) is a nonprofit organization founded in 2001 by Dr. Mary Shuttleworth, an educator born and raised in apartheid South Africa, where she witnessed firsthand the devastating effects of discrimination and the lack of basic human rights. The purpose of YHRI is to teach youth about human rights, specifically the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and inspire them to become advocates for tolerance and peace. YHRI has now grown into a global movement, including hundreds of groups, clubs and chapters around the world. Youth for Human Rights International teaches human rights education both in the classroom and in nontraditional educational settings. We aim to reach people from diverse backgrounds, with materials which often appeal across generations. By teaching human rights through all means-from conferences and workshops to hip-hop and dancing-this message has spread around the world.

This website, while providing a fairly detailed summary of The Reconstruction, I have bookmarked because of the images it contains. I think pictures and images are a useful tool in shaping students perceptions of history; as Erin evidenced in her last lesson plan, providing students with a model for critically examining images could prove very beneficial to building on their critical thinking abilities.

DocSouth is a website run through UNC Chapel Hill that provides pirmary sources relating to the American South via the internet. It's a really simple site to use, but extremely rich with content. It also provides guides on how to site the materials found within the site and could be a very good web site from which to draw primary sources for the classroom and also to help teach research skills.

The Valley of the Shadow (also called the Valley Project) website is a part of the Virginia Center for Digital History at the University of Virginia. The material in the site documents the lives of two communities during the Civil War period; one community from the South and one community from the North. The site is an online library or an archive filled with primary resources such as letter, diaries, census records, government records, newspapers, speeches, maps, images and other materials. The site contains thousands of documents. The archive is divided into three sections: The Eve of War (Fall 1859-Spring 1861), The War Years (Spring 1861-Spring 1865), and The Aftermath (Spring 1865-Fall 1870). An example of one such document is a letter written in August, 1864 by a young militiaman to his parents telling them that he is well and that he will be sending home his pay. I have added a few lines because I find it so interesting and compelling. The letter comes from a camp near Petersburg. Dear Parents it is with the Greatest of Pleashure that I seat My self to inform you and My Brothers and Sisters that I like it well and am well feal Hartey like ite beter now than Ever I did I hope that youens Ar all well and all the Rest about [unclear: tomstorm] ile now state to you that I Received your Letter last Knight And was Glad to here from youens And was glad to here that Youenes wasened yet dissturbed By The Johneys Rebes you Stated in your letter that tha Wes moveing every thing out Of Town now if tha wold be men tha wold take In the same document but another page, the young man writes about his pay. Read this letter we ar getting Paid off to day I draw 1.20.10 that is one hundrad 20 dollars 10 cts Ile ex press 1 hundrade 10 dollars and mebbey fifteen dollars I dont want to ceep so mutch money here I cend it to you and if you want to make youse of it whi you may get the Chirldren wat ever tha want that is in the eating line And Close but you must be A littl

I ran out of room in the box above.....anyway, I am not certain what the citation rules are regarding this but I found the letter on the website that I have bookmarked, The Valley of the Shadow. Anyway, it is a great site….there is soooo much more.

Host: Joan Neuberger, Professor of History and Editor, Not Even Past Guest: H.W. Brands, Dickson, Allen, Anderson Centennial Professor of History, UT-Austin After the chaos of the American Civil War, Congress and lawmakers had to figure out how to put the Union back together again-no easy feat, considering that issues of political debate were settled on the battlefield, but not in the courtroom nor in the arena of public opinion. How did the defeated South and often vindictive North manage to resolve their differences over issues so controversial that they had torn the Union apart? Historian H.W. Brands from UT's Department of History reflects on this issues and how he has dealt with them in his thirty years of experience in teaching about Reconstruction: "It's one of the hardest parts of American history to teach, in part because I think it's the hardest to just understand."

Youtube Playlist Learn about the political, social, and economic changes in the Union and the Confederacy and the Civil War's long-term economic and intellectual impact. A New Birth of Freedom: The Civil War, 1861-1865 narrates the history of the American Civil War. While the course examines individual engagements and the overall nature of the military conflict, the focus is less on the battlefield than on political, social, and economic change in the Union and the Confederacy. Central to the account are the road to emancipation, the role of black soldiers, the nature of Abraham Lincoln's wartime leadership, internal dissent in both the North and South, the changing position of women in both societies, and the war's long-term economic and intellectual impact. We end with a look at the beginnings of Reconstruction during the conflict. This course is part of the series, The Civil War and Reconstruction, which introduces students to the most pivotal era in American history. The Civil War transformed the nation by eliminating the threat of secession and destroying the institution of slavery. It raised questions that remain central to our understanding of ourselves as a people and a nation - the balance of power between local and national authority, the boundaries of citizenship, and the meanings of freedom and equality. The series will examine the causes of the war, the road to secession, the conduct of the Civil War, the coming of emancipation, and the struggle after the war to breathe meaning into the promise of freedom for four million emancipated slaves. One theme throughout the series is what might be called the politics of history - how the world in which a historian lives affects his or her view of the past, and how historical interpretations reinforce or challenge the social order of the present. See other courses in this series: The Civil War and Reconstruction - 1850-1861 The Civil War and Reconstruction - 1865-1890 "The Civil War and Recons

Strategy of the Civil War. The advantages and disadvantages of the North and South in the American Civil War.

This site provides accurate information on the American Civil War. Using sources from the award winning Ken Burns documentary "The Civil War" which provide any social studies teacher with accurate information yo use in designing lesson plans. 

How might teachers use this site?

The slave narrative project of the WPA in the 1930s is one of our greatest historical preservation efforts. Today, historians are scrambling around to preserve the narratives of Holocaust survivors and WWII vets, as they are rapidly leaving us. This is a good way to introduce the importance of oral histories. It would also be a good piece to start a lesson on evaluating primary sources.