Starting October 1, 2002, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich will moderate a month-long open discussion on USING MATERIAL CULTURE TO TEACH U.S. HISTORY on the HISTORY MATTERS website (http://historymatters.gmu.edu). From the HISTORY MATTERS home page select “Using Material Culture to Teach U.S. History—October 2002—Laurel Thatcher Ulrich as Guest Moderator.” To subscribe, choose “Join or leave the list.” Professor Ulrich will lead a discussion and answer questions on approaches to teaching with material culture in U.S. history survey courses at the high school and college levels and will include suggestions for resources as well as strategies.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History and Director of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. Her most recent book, The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of An American Myth (2001), explores the production and consumption as well as the social meanings of textiles in pre-industrial New England. She is also the author of the Pulitzer Prize winning A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 (1991), Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750 (1982), and numerous articles and essays on early American history. Recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she assisted in the production of a documentary film based on A Midwife’s Tale and her work is also featured on the website DO HISTORY

HISTORY MATTERS is a gateway to the Web for teachers of the U.S. History Survey course. It provides high school and college teachers (and their students) a starting point for exploring American history on the Web with 800 first-person historical documents for use in the classroom, an annotated guide to 700 quality, history websites, and a range of teaching resources (including sample syllabi, teaching assignments, and forums). HISTORY MATTERS is a project of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning of the City University of New York. The HISTORY MATTERS website was created with support from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The 2002-2003 forums are funded by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.