Portland State University wants to invite community college teachers to a National Endowment for the Humanities summer workshop, Currents of History: The Columbia River & the Making of the American West.” This six-day workshop will be offered twice in Summer 2005: June 26-July 1 & July 10-July 15. Admitted participants will receive a $500 stipend and are eligible for travel support. Applications must be postmarked no later than March 15, 2005. A brief description and contact information follows. For more information, be sure to check out our website at www.ccrh.org.

Water, or the want of it, is a defining feature in the history of the American West and the region’s river systems are important landmarks that have long guided human activity. The Columbia River, “the Great River of the West” shaped human communities in the Pacific Northwest for millennia, its currents a powerful force in a region largely defined by aridity. An examination of this river’s history leads to a study of Native American lifeways, pre-industrial exploration, a contest of nations for territorial control, American expansion, federalism, and competing resource use.

Workshop participants will travel the lower Columbia and a portion of the mid-Columbia River with historians as their guides. As the workshop moves upriver, it will move forward in time, from late-18th and early 19th century exploration to the Cold War of the 1950s. The workshop will focus on four sites (Astoria, Portland, Bonneville Dam, and The Dalles) along the Columbia River, each representative of an important historic period. Participants will work with a community college “master teacher” to incorporate workshop materials and topics into their U.S. history survey syllabi.

Please visit the workshop website (web address provided below), for more information, including application instructions. Dr. Katy Barber, the program director, can be reached at the following telephone number and e-mail address.