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2023 Grant Awards

American Pasts in American Places

  • Emma Hart
  • College of Arts & Sciences, Department of History, McNeil Center
  • First-Year Seminar Grant
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All around you are traces of America’s past. Some of them, like Independence Hall, are easy to see. Others are more obscure. The long-disappeared Philadelphia house where Cyrus Bustill, a free Black baker of the Revolutionary era, opened his school for Black children is visible only because of a recently erected historic marker. This course introduces you to the skills and techniques necessary to read America’s past in the landscape around you. Even a place like Independence Hall has had many meanings and uses since it was built in 1732 as each generation has projected their understanding of its significance onto its bricks and mortar. We will explore a variety of places – extant and long gone, local and farther afield – to uncover what they can tell us about the American past and its connections to the American present. Meetings will include field trips to places discussed in the course.

  • 2023
  • College of Arts & Sciences
  • Department of History
  • First-Year Seminar
  • McNeil Center
  • Teaching Art Grant

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The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation

John McInerney (he/him)
Executive Director
215-573-0874
mcinernj@upenn.edu

Chloe Reison (she/her)
Associate Director
215-573-2159
reison@upenn.edu

Elizabeth Shaw (she/her)
Administrative Assistant
215-898-5930
elizshaw@upenn.edu

The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation offices are located at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Pennsylvania.

3680 Walnut Street
Philadelphia PA

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