June 27, 2001

Contact: Janet Crow, Hall Center for the Humanities, (785) 864-4798.

14 teachers selected for NEH summer seminar at KU

LAWRENCE -- Fourteen high school teachers from 12 states will participate in the 2001 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar for Teachers at the University of Kansas, June 30 to July 26. KU's Hall Center for the Humanities is host for the four-week seminar.

Janet Sharistanian, KU professor of English, will direct the course "American Women as Writers: Wharton and Cather." The teachers will focus on four major novels by two landmark, Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of the early 20th century: Edith Wharton's "House of Mirth" and "The Custom of the Country," and Willa Cather's "The Song of the Lark" and "A Lost Lady."

Selected from a highly qualified pool of applicants, the seminar participants hail from 12 states including Kansas. The seminar will include a field trip to Red Cloud, Neb., Willa Cather's childhood home. In Red Cloud, the seminar participants will visit sites that have been restored and preserved by the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial and are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The seminar is one of 30 summer study opportunities supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal agency that each summer supports seminars and institutes at colleges and universities so that teachers can study with experts in the humanities. The participants, hometown and school are:

DOUGLAS COUNTY
From Lawrence / Free State High
Samuel Rabiola

CALIFORNIA
From Oceanside / Laurel Elementary School
Linda Flores
From San Francisco / Gateway High School
Sharon Olken

CONNECTICUT
From West Hartford / Kingswood-Oxford School
Ronald Monroe

DELAWARE
From Middletown / St. Andrew's School
David Beckman

ILLINOIS
From Peoria / Peoria Middle School
Yvonne Frey

MARYLAND
From Forestville / Bishop McNamara High School
Elizabeth Blaufuss

MASSACHUSETTS
From Chicopee / Fairview Veterans Memorial Middle School
Denise Freisberg

NEW JERSEY
From Boonton / Boonton High School
Susan Jones
From Livingston / Newark Academy
Timothy Blackburn

NEW YORK
From New Rochelle / New Rochelle High School
Ellen Sackelman

OHIO
From Whitehall / Sherman High School
Beth Sundermeyer

TEXAS
From Sherman
Diane Clark

VIRGINIA
From Chatham / Chatham Hall
Mary Edmonds