Workshops and Seminars
SAI hosts and co-hosts a number of teacher training workshops on the UT campus during the year. We design our professional development opportunities to address the TEKS and TAKS objectives for social studies. At our training events, teachers gain knowledge from Institute guests and faculty experts, teaching materials and strategies to use them in the classroom, and CPE hours. Below is a listing of our current and recent professional development opportunities for K-12 teachers.
Hemispheres’ Summer Teachers’ Institute 2011: Cold War Cultures
The Cold War was one of the most influential events in American and world history. In addition to shaping generations who came of age between 1945 and 1990, its legacy continues to affect us today.
This summer, Hemispheres and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and Museum teamed up to offer an unprecedented global look at the Cold War and its lasting economic, political and social impact not only on the two major players in the conflict— the U.S. and former Soviet Union—but on the rest of the world as well. In addition to a lineup of engaging speakers, primary documents from the library archives were used to enhance our program.
Presented by:
Center for European Studies
Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies
Center for Middle Eastern Studies
Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies
South Asia Institute
Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and Museum
AIM: South Asia Workshop (Spring 2011): Another Kashmir: Beyond the "Security" Paradigm
“My memory keeps getting in the way of your history….” – Agha Shahid Ali from The Country without a Post Office
This workshop is designed for high school social studies and English teachers who are interested in incorporating the region of South Asia into their curriculum. Workshop speakers will attempt to intervene in recent conversations regarding Kashmir that have spoken of Kashmir’s relevance to the nation-states of India and Pakistan, more then they have the dynamics of religious identities or the cultural artifacts and aesthetic concerns of the Kashmir people. Moving away from depictions of a homogenous Kashmiri Muslim identity and related issues of territorial claims and security concerns, the workshop will place Kashmir within a larger context to provide alternate understandings of Kashmir and its peoples.
The workshop is designed to address the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) and national social studies standards that examine culture’s relationship to art and literature and historical processes related to the development of national identity and independence movements.
Presentations will be made by the following speakers, who have particular research and teaching expertise on the topic:
- Akbar Hyder, Associate Professor of Asian Studies, University of Texas at Austin
- Shujaat Bukhari, Kashmiri Journalist, South Asia Media Commission
- Chitralekha Zutshi, Associate Professor of History, College of William and Mary
- Sadaf Munshi, Assistant Professor-Linguistics, University of North Texas
The workshop is limited to 25 participants who will be chosen on a first come first serve basis. Attendance is free of charge to all teachers, but pre-registration is required. Selected participants will be given readings before the workshop and that will be examined in the presentations.
Date: Saturday, April 9, 2011
Time: 9:30 am – 4:00 pm
Place: Will C. Hogg Building Room 4.118
The University of Texas at Austin
Attendees will receive:
- Professional Development Hours (CPE)
- Teacher materials
- Lunch and other refreshments
To Register and for more information on the workshop, please contact: rachelmeyer@austin.utexas.edu
AIM: South Asia Workshop (Fall 2010): Understanding Photographs: India and the History of Photography
Photography was first introduced to India in 1840, only a year after the announcements of the daguerreotype and calotype processes in France and England. The study of 'photography in India' should take place within the wider context of the growth of the history of photography. For instance, the tension between a focus on the subject versus the aesthetics of a photograph can reveal interesting dimensions of social history. The workshop builds upon the opportunity provided by a current exhibition (at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin) that traces the history of photography, combining a tour of the exhibition with presentations by scholars whose expertise includes India and photographs. The workshop intends to provide a significant foundation upon which participants will be able to use photographs as primary documents that can enhance an understanding of the production of culture.
The day will concluded with an in-depth tour of the current exhibition, "Discovering the Language of Photography: The Gernsheim Collection," at the Harry Ransom Center. Exploring the history of photography through more than 175 items, this exhibition showcases one of the seminal collections of the history of photography in the United States that is now part of UT's renowned holdings of photography.
Hemispheres' Summer Teachers' Institute 2010: Unraveling Race and Ethnicity
What is race? What is ethnicity? What¹s the difference between them? In addition to shaping the world in which we live, they continue to affect our lives and our perceptions of other people and places. And although they come up in classroom discussion frequently, they are sensitive topics that make even the most confident educator tread lightly.
This workshop from Hemispheres will look at race and ethnicity in a global context, from the historical to the contemporary. We¹ll begin by exploring theoretical issues that will boost your understanding<and that of your students<of what these terms mean and how that meaning can change in different contexts. We'll then look at the ways societies around the world both define and deal with them, both positively and negatively. Finally, we'll facilitate audience discussion and development of classroom strategies that will help you unravel the complexities of discussing race and ethnicity effectively in your classroom.
AIM: South Asia Workshop (Spring 2010): The Empire Writes Back: Teaching Postcolonial Literature from South Asia
This workshop is designed for high school social studies and English teachers who are interested in incorporating literature from South Asia into their curriculum. Faculty speakers will explore an understanding of post colonial writing and theory in a literary, historical and social context. The event starts from the idea of post coloniality as a global condition affecting not only literature but also the categories we use to think about human experience: relations between colonizers and colonized; between culture and power; ideas about identity, authenticity and hybridity; notions of roots, motherland, nationality; and conditions of migration and cosmopolitanism. The workshop is limited to 25 participants who will be chosen on a first come first serve basis. Attendance is free of charge to all teachers, but pre-registration is required. Selected participants will be given short stories and excerpts of larger works to read before the workshop and that will be examined in the presentations.
AIM: South Asia Workshop (Fall 2009):Global Flows and Local Impacts: Stories from South Asia
This workshop, designed for middle and high school teachers, explores the global nature of contemporary social change in South Asia. It takes globalization as major force that reshapes social life in the region, while recognizing that social outcomes are shaped through interaction with other processes as well. The workshop brings together UT faculty expertise and perspectives from geography, cultural studies, anthropology, political science, and economics to explore the meanings of globalization and its local impacts within South Asia today. Through presentations and discussion, we will examine the relationship between globalization; inequality and poverty; the fate of cultural diversity; and issues of identity, the environment, and human rights.
Hemispheres' Summer Teachers' Institute 2009: Sense of Place: Intersecting geography, History, and Culture
How have our changing perceptions of our geographic surroundings led to changes in human society? How do cities and urban spaces reflect the societies that build them? How do those spaces in turn serve as vehicles for creativity, production, and social change? How is the character of a place related to its political, economic, social, and cultural characteristics?
The fields we farm, the cities we build, the spaces we preserve, the borders we protect‹within each set of choices we make, we reveal our perceptions of and relationship with the land that surrounds us. By studying the connections between natural geographic features, human settlement, and cultural identity, we can begin to see landscape not as background scenery but as an expression of ourselves and of our historic development. Between the core disciplines of World Geography, World History, and World Cultures, few fields of study are beginning to emerge that explores ways that these fields (once studied in isolation) influence each other.
AIM: South Asia Workshop (Spring 2009): Beauty in the Worlds of Islam
"Beauty in the Worlds of Islam" is a two-day K-12 and post-secondary workshop designed to explore the manner in which beauty is created, judged, negotiated, and relayed in Muslim societies from Asia to the Americas. The conference will emphasize the range of ways in which the diverse imaginative spirit of Muslim peoples is manifested in architecture, music, poetry, rhetoric, and calligraphy. It also hopes to draw attention to issues of gender, sexuality, disenfranchisement, and modernity as they shape the ideas of "beauty." The conference takes on the twofold task of enriching American high school and college pedagogies pertaining to social studies and of enhancing interdisciplinary conversation among scholars of history, culture, language, literature, and religion.
AIM: South Asia Workshop (Fall 2008): Land and Landscape in South Asia
Land is the base - a product of geology, soil, climate - usually assessed in parcels through its economic functioning (whether a society actually thinks via these abstractions or not). It is composed of the physical world and affected by actions of the living.
Landscape forms the conceptions we have of place or places, propped upon, yet largely independent of, what is meant by "land." It is how we imagine a place, how we picture it to ourselves. "Landscape" thus covers a mental idea - the image of land, something conceived of and therefore made operable or controllable as a concept. "Nature knows nothing of what we call landscape." Landscape is largely an aesthetic, mental concept with great implications for how we structure our lives.This K-12 workshop addresses topics concerning land and landscape that are often studied separately. Participants will be exposed to ways of thinking about their importance in order to understand the significance of culture (including religion, literature and art) and geography in South Asia.
Hemispheres' Summer Teachers' Institute 2008: Recognizing Rights and Responsibilities in the 21st Century
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” - Article 1 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights
In what ways are governments and other powerful institutions responsible to act toward individuals and each other “in a spirit of brotherhood”? How do we define human rights, in the most expansive sense of the term? And how are rights and resources being claimed and fought for around the world? Hemispheres Summer Teachers’ Institute 2008 will explore the international context for the rights-related challenges we face today. We will look at specific cases that illustrate how people conceive of and struggle for crucial rights in civil, political, cultural, and economic realms. The workshop program is designed to address the TEKS and TAKS objectives for social studies that deal with topics related to history, government, citizenship, and culture.
AIM: South Asia Workshop (Fall 2007): East Asian Buddhists Pilgrims in South Asia and the Significance of Xuanzang
Pilgrimage is an important practice in many religions, and Buddhism is no exception. Indeed, it is a significant factor in this religion’s phenomenal spread throughout the world. Xuanzang, who lived in the seventh century, was only one of many such Chinese travelers to India in search of “sacred traces” of the Buddha, but his written account of an amazing journey helped to ensure his long-lived fame. His record provides many details of Buddhist practices as well as the appearance of Buddhist sites and images that would otherwise be unknown. Xuanzang’s particular views of Buddhism and Buddhist India have had a profound impact on practioners and scholars alike, and today he is widely invoked as the paradigmatic figure of a Buddhist pilgrim. This one-day symposium considers the significance of the sacred land of the Buddha through a focus on Xuanzang.
Hemispheres' Summer Teachers’ Institute 2007: Restoring Women to World Studies
In much of the social studies—especially courses focused on world history, geography, and culture—there is a growing awareness that the experience of women has been left out of the narrative. As a primary organizing category in our world, gender is a crucial concept in understanding other nations, cultures, and people. Women and gender often appear in the standards and as a theme in courses, but textbooks and other traditional resources do not adequately cover women around the world. This workshop addressed the need to increase global awareness in an increasingly interdependent world, while also responding to the need to consider women and gender in a global cross-cultural perspective. Hemispheres 2007 Summer Teachers’ Institute explored the situation of women—historical and contemporary—in Latin America, the Middle East, Russia, East Europe and Eurasia, and South Asia. We discussed the contributions of notable women to historical and artistic movements, talked about concepts of gender roles and gendered spaces, looked at issues that are driving women’s movements today, and examined the greater context in which all of these take place. The workshop program was designed to address the TEKS and TAKS objectives for social studies that deal with topics related to women in citizenship, culture, and history.AIM: South Asia Workshop (Spring 2007): The Significance of Ashoka, first Emperor of India
Emperor Ashoka (273-232 BCE) is held to be one of India’s greatest rulers. UT professors from the Department of Asian Studies guided participants in an examination of what we know about Ashoka and the time in which he lived, in order to gain a better understanding of his significance in ancient Indian history. The workshop introduced participants to the political and religious developments that appear to have occurred under Ashoka’s rule, the problems scholars face in assessing the exact features and impact of Ashoka’s reign, and the nature and significance of surviving texts and visual evidence used to define the importance of Ashoka. The workshop concluded with a comparison of Ashoka’s reign to the much later Mughal emperor Akbar (1556-1605), through an analysis of recent Indian films and comics, to consider how popular media shapes views of India’s past rulers. Workshop participants enhanced their teaching of comparative systems of empire, the role of religion in state formation, and the use of primary source materials in the study of the past. The workshop was designed for middle and high school teachers.
