(Carlisle, PA) To try to support K-12 and college educators who are heading online during the 2020 pandemic, we are launching a campaign to raise awareness about our extensive library of classroom-friendly videos that have been built over the years to enhance the teaching of 19th-century American history and history methods. These 120+ short videos include virtual field trips, close reading models, interviews with leading historians, student-produced documentaries, technology & research tutorials and even some music videos –all providing effective, easy-to-navigate educational content.
The House Divided Project’s multi-media content has definitely been “teacher approved.” Our YouTube channel already has over 1 million views and nearly 1,000 subscribers. We have conducted teacher trainings with our digital resources for over 5,000 educators from 48 states. In addition, our project director, Matthew Pinsker, has now been featured in dozens of professionally produced educational videos for the History Channel, C-SPAN, Gilder Lehrman Institute (GLI) and other organizations. Starting today, video highlights from these collections will be curated here and easily available for all types of educators to navigate. We also plan to highlight individual videos and to encourage other academic colleagues to do the same for their own productions under the social media hashtag: #historyvideos
Virtual Field Trips
Did you have to cancel a trip to Gettysburg or Washington, DC? We’ve got some excellent in-depth video tours, especially designed for classroom use, led by historian Matthew Pinsker:
-
- Teacher’s Tour of Gettysburg Battlefield (1 hour or 13 stops @ ~5 min each // With GLI // Location: Civil War & Reconstruction Digital Classroom)
- Video Tour of Ford’s Theatre (9 stops @ ~ 3 min each // Ford’s Theatre Society)
- Lincoln’s Summer White House (26 min // CSPAN)
- House Divided Studio (2 min) with the Dickinson & Slavery exhibit (3 min // YouTube) and Fox43 coverage of possible renaming on campus
Abraham Lincoln
Are you looking for new ways to bring Lincoln’s words to life in your classroom? Try some of these multi-media resources, including video analysis of his top writings from our project director, multi-media excerpts from a prize-winning Lincoln biography, top-quality student documentaries, a Dickinson college theatre professor reading dozens of Lincoln’s writings in his “voice,” and even a music video from a popular 1860 campaign song.
-
- Matthew Pinsker Offers Close Readings of 25 Top Lincoln Documents (5 to 10 min videos // Location: Lincoln’s Writings: Multi-Media Edition)
- Plus select student close reading videos on 1838 Letter to Eliza Browning (Jesse O’Neill), 1861 Seward Memo (Moyra Schauffler), 1862 Letter to Gen. McClellan (Susan Segal), and 1862 Letter to Fanny McCullough (Megan van Gorder) // Location: History 288 Civil War & Reconstruction
- Michael Burlingame’s biography of Lincoln, multi-media excerpts (8 clips @ ~7 min each // Location: Journal Divided)
- LECTURE: Pinsker on Election of 1860 (75 min // CSPAN)
- LECTURE: Pinsker on Lincoln in 1861 (45 min // CSPAN)
- LECTURE: Pinsker on Gettysburg Address (52 min // YouTube)
- LECTURE: Pinsker on Lincoln Movie (47 min // CSPAN)
- Lincoln-Douglas Debates overview (8 min // David Park, ’10 // Location: Lincoln Douglas Debates Digital Classroom)
- Lincoln’s Autobiographical Sketch (6 min // Leah Miller, ’14 // Voice by Prof. Todd Wronski // Location: Lincoln’s Writings: Multi-Media Edition)
- PODCAST: Prof. Todd Wronski Reads Classic Writings in Lincoln’s Voice // Soundcloud
- MUSIC VIDEO: “Lincoln & Liberty” (2 min // Dickinson Choir // YouTube)
Slavery & Emancipation
One of our most popular classroom videos over the years has been a student-produced documentary short film about Henry Spradley, an escaped slave who became a longtime employee at Dickinson College. His story helped spark numerous other video efforts about various Dickinsonians involved in the 19th-century battle between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces. In partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute and the History Channel, we have also developed numerous multi-media resources on the Dred Scott Case and Emancipation Proclamation.
- Henry W. Spradley, Citizen (11 min // Colin Macfarlane, ’12 // Location: Dickinson & Slavery)
- Noah and Carrie Pinkney (2 min // Narrated by Dana Marecheau, ’20 // Dickinson & Slavery)
- Robert C. Young (2 min // Narrated by Naji Thompson, ’19 // Dickinson & Slavery)
- Dickinson & Slavery overview (3 min) and Dickinson & Slavery short overview (1 min)
- Pro-slavery profiles: James Buchanan (Trevor Diamond, ’17), Richard McAllister (Cooper Wingert, ’20), and Roger Taney (Sarah Goldberg, ’18) (2 min each // Location: Dickinson & Slavery)
- Anti-slavery profiles: Moncure Conway (Sam Weisman, ’18), John McClintock (Frank Kline, ’19), and James McKim (Becca Stout, ’19) (2 min each // Location: Dickinson & Slavery)
- Pinsker on Dred & Harriet Scott Case (4 min // GLI // Location: Civil War & Reconstruction Online Course)
- Sound Smart (with Pinsker) on Dred Scott Case (2 min // History Channel)
- Interview with scholar Lea VanderVelde on freedom suits (7 min // YouTube)
- Pinsker on Emancipation Proclamation (12 min // Location: Emancipation Digital Classroom)
- Pinsker on Black Soldiers (3 min // Location: Civil War & Reconstruction Digital Classroom)
- Historian Robert Engs on African Americans After Emancipation (2 min // YouTube)
Underground Railroad
From the summer of 2006 to 2008, Dickinson College hosted NEH-funded teacher workshops on the Underground Railroad that helped us produce a number of myth-busting videotaped interviews with leading scholars. More recently, the House Divided Project has embarked on a new partnership with the National Park Service regarding the critically important though often overlooked phenomenon of mass escapes from slavery, or “slave stampedes,” as they were called at the time. Our student interns have begun to produce a series of short documentaries explaining the significance of these stampedes for understanding the coming of the Civil War.
-
- Four interviews with scholar Fergus Bordewich on UGRR myths // 4 min each // Location: UGRR Digital Classroom
- Six interviews with scholar Kate Clifford Larson on Harriet Tubman // 3 min each // Location: UGRR Digital Classroom
- Panel on Teaching the Underground Railroad with Pinsker, Spencer Crew and Timothy Westcott (60 min // C-SPAN)
- Panel on Fugitive Slave Law & Immigration with Pinsker, Richard Blackett, Andrew Delbanco, and Judith Giesberg (90 min // C-SPAN)
- 1849 Canton Stampede (3 min) // NPS Slave Stampedes Blog
- 1854 St. Louis Stampede (3 min // Dana Marecheau, ’20 and Cooper Wingert, ’20 // Location: NPS Slave Stampedes Blog
- 1855 Mary Meachum / St. Louis Stampede (3 min) // NPS Slave Stampedes Blog
- 1859 Doy Stampede (3 min // Amanda Donoghue, ’19 and Cooper Wingert, ’20 // Location: NPS Slave Stampedes Blog
- 1861 Harris Family / Chicago Stampede (3 min) // NPS Slave Stampedes Blog
Civil War
Students at Dickinson College have produced a series of compelling documentary short films about the Civil War, often through the lens of the town of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The House Divided Project has also produced a revealing documentary about a Texas infantryman in the Confederate army who desperately missed his young daughter.
- Autograph Book: Carlisle in 1861 (3 min // Rachel Morgan, ’18 and Sam Weisman, ’18)
- From Carlisle to Andersonville (14 min // Prof. John Osborne // Location: Cumberland Civil War)
- Do They Miss Me at Home? (10 min // David Gillespie, ’11 // Location: Cumberland Civil War)
- 1861 Harris Family / Chicago Stampede (3 min) // NPS Slave Stampedes Blog
- Great Emancipators and 1862 Loutre Island Stampede (4 min // NPS Stampedes Blog)
- CSA Private William Elisha Stoker (9 min // Don Sailer, ’09 // With National Civil War Museum // Location: Texas Farmer’s Civil War)
- Henry W. Spradley, Citizen (11 min // Colin Macfarlane, ’12 // Location: Dickinson & Slavery)
- LECTURE: Pinsker on Lincoln in 1861 (45 min // CSPAN)
- LECTURE: Pinsker on Gettysburg Address (52 min // YouTube)
- LECTURE: Pinsker on Lincoln Movie (47 min // CSPAN)
- LECTURE: Judge Thomas Logue on Civil War & Constitution (60 min // YouTube)
- Historian Mark Neely on “total war” (2 min // YouTube)
- Historian Mark Neely on civil liberties (5 min // YouTube)
- Pinsker on Black Soldiers (3 min // Location: Civil War & Reconstruction Digital Classroom)
- Pinsker on Fort Sumter (2 min // History Channel)
- Pinsker on Women in the Civil War (2 min // History Channel)
Reconstruction
In 2016, the House Divided Project at Dickinson College hosted a multi-day conference and teacher workshop on Reconstruction featuring leading historians such Eric Foner, Gregory Downs, Jeffrey Rosen, and Anne Rubin. Their presentations and interviews from that weekend are now feely available at our YouTube channel.
- Eric Foner on Reconstruction (2 min // YouTube)
- Three Historians Debate Reconstruction (4 min // YouTube)
- Jeffrey Rosen on John Bingham (2 min // YouTube)
- Matthew Pinsker on Prince Rivers (2 min // YouTube)
- Gregory Downs on Robert Smalls (2 min // YouTube)
- LECTURE: Eric Foner on Reconstruction (90 min // Location: Reconstruction Conference)
- DISCUSSION: Jeffrey Rosen on Second Founding (75 min // Location: Reconstruction Conference)
- LECTURE: Matthew Pinsker on House Divided & Reconstruction (60 min // Location: Reconstruction Conference)
- LECTURE: Gregory Downs on After Appomattox (75 min // Location: Reconstruction Conference)
- LECTURE: Anne Rubin on Legacy of Sherman’s March (60 min // Location: Reconstruction Conference)
19th-Century to 19th Amendment
In 2017, the History Channel launched a new online video series called “Sound Smart” that offered short (2 minute) videos on a wide variety of American History topics. Project director Matthew Pinsker contributed ten of these classroom-friendly videos:
- Manifest Destiny (1840s)
- Compromise of 1850
- Fugitive Slave Law (1850)
- Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)
- Bleeding Kansas (1856)
- Dred Scott Case (1857)
- Fort Sumter (1861)
- Women in the Civil War (1861-65)
- Homestead Act (1862)
- 19th Amendment (1920)
Technology Tutorials
Some of our most popular video productions have been tutorials that help show students how to build various types of multi-media projects using a wide variety of free online tools.
- Windows Movie Maker (Russ Allen)
- iMovie (Leah Miller)
- Google Maps (Trevor Diamond)
- Weebly (Rachel Morgan)
- TimelineJS (Sarah Goldberg)
- StorymapJS (Sam Weisman)
History Methods
At House Divided Project, we are always interested in promoting historical thinking and the latest insights about mastering historical methods in the 21st-century classroom. We’ve interviewed some leading historians and filmmakers about these topics. Perhaps most important, however, some of our best student videos, like Colin Macfarlane’s documentary on Henry Spradley, help demonstrate first-rate historical methods in action.
- Eric Foner on history education at House Divided (1 min // YouTube)
- Tips on Oral History Interviewing (5 min // Hannah Ayers & Lance Warren // YouTube)
- How to Build a Career in Documentary Filmmaking (3 min // Hannah Ayers & Lance Warren // YouTube)
- Future of Documentary Filmmaking (3 min // Hannah Ayers & Lance Warren // YouTube)
- Gettysburg and Digital Filmmaking (8 min // Jake Boritt // YouTube)
- Henry W. Spradley, Citizen (11 min // Colin Macfarlane, ’12 // Location: Dickinson & Slavery)