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The Future is Near! 'Yesterday's Tomorrows' Coming to Michigan Between March, 2001, and January, 2002, the Smithsonian Institution makes its third visit to Michigan under the Museum on Main Street (MOMS) program. MOMS is a partnership between state humanities councils and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) that brings Smithsonian exhibitions to rural communities which, due to space and cost limitations, typically don't have access to traveling exhibits. For 2001, Michigan Humanities Council and SITES are bringing the exhibition "Yesterday's Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future" to:
Facilitating broad state access to the cultural resources of our nation's premier museum is a priority of Michigan Humanities Council. The Council's role in this tour includes providing grant and program support to help host communities augment the Smithsonian exhibition with their own stories, exhibits and programs. Here's a sample of what's in the works: At Tecumseh, project organizers plan a series of public presentations by Michigan scholars exploring such topics as "The Future of Lenawee County" by Dr. Charles Lindquist, curator of the Lenawee County Historical Museum, on May 19; "Finding the Future in Film" by Russ Collins of Ann Arbor's Michigan Theatre June 3, and "Automobiles in the Future" by Joe Loeffler of the General Motors Design Department on June 23. They also plan a youth arts program "Back to the Future" Saturday mornings during the exhibit's run. In Greenville, pre-school to college-age students and area residents will create their vision of the future in paintings, sculptures and drawings to display alongside the exhibit. The local historical society will create an accompanying exhibit on Greenville's past and future. The Ironwood Theatre will use its facility to offer a film and discussion series featuring "Flash Gordon," "2001 Space Odyssey" and other science fiction classics. In addition, site representatives are working with area merchants to develop supplemental window displays about past and future retail products. The Rogers City historical society will sponsor a poster and essay contest and is working closely with Presque Isle County schools to incorporate the exhibit into next school year's curriculum and classroom field trip schedule. A display of futuristic costumes is planned for the traditional kiddie parade at the community's Nautical Festival as well as an experimental aircraft fly-in. The Leelanau Historical Society will host a family Thanksgiving weekend matinee viewing and discussion of the Cold War sci-fi classic "Forbidden Planet" at the Bay Theatre in Leland. The society and the Leelanau Photography Cooperative also plan a photographic restudy project for high school students. Using photos from the museum's archives, they will compare past images of street scenes in Leelanau County with current images and imagine what it will look like in the future. High school students will meet with county commissioners to discuss land use issues and their future visions for their community. Activities will also include a complementary exhibition on the theme of robots and their role in daily life on the Leelanau Peninsula.
With "Yesterday's Tomorrows," Michigan venues benefit from the prestige of hosting a Smithsonian traveling exhibition and from learning to build their own supplemental programs and exhibitions. They've embarked on a year-long process of comprehensive institutional and community advancement. Project coordinator LuAnn Kern, project scholar Dr. Eric Rabkin of the University of Michigan's Department of English Language and Literature and SITES personnel provide opportunities for hands-on training in grant writing and fund-raising, marketing and public relations, educational programming, docent training, exhibit design, collections management and community relations. As with previous MOMS exhibitions, the Council provides on-site consultations, a statewide planning workshop (last September), an upcoming hands-on installation workshop March 14 and web -page programming. The Council is committed to seeing that each participating institution is significantly improved as a result of its participation in the "Yesterday's Tomorrows," tour. About the Exhibit
"Yesterday's Tomorrows," offers the opportunity to examine how past ideas of the future shape contemporary values and attitudes and invites assessment of current ideas about what the future holds. Other copies of the "Yesterday's Tomorrows," exhibit will tour Florida, Georgia, Missouri and Utah this year. The national itinerary and further information are found at: http://www.yesterdaystomorrows.org.
At the center of information clutter in a culture driven by inventing and reinventing itself, there is a kind of anti-historicism. One of the great enemies of history has always been the concept of "modernism," a notion that attaches the value of progress over time to world views of culture and nature. Today, this anti-historicism is rooted in a culture-wide belief in an eternal present, in the defining and redefining of the eternal "new," and of the value of "youth" over "age," and, often, of spontaneity and reflex over reflection and wisdom. The belief in "newness," the obsession with the rights of the present, is nothing new, of course. It is a fact of modernity, which is itself "always here." Because modernity defines the "now," it has nothing to do with the past. But at the "cutting edge of human experience," the now, the always with us, those cultures obsessed with the concept of progress define the ages as rungs of improvement. Thus, the concept of progress. Modernity beats "old-fashioned." In some way, technology creates time for us because it is the measure of our success over mortality and discomfort. We have, therefore, moved through stone, bronze, wood, machine and information ages, making "gains" all the way. For all the arguable gains of machine over discomfort, this concept of newness dooms the past to "eternal obsolescence" rather than assigns to it any value that could lead to wisdom: "That was your folks, Dad; this is the 'now' generation." It sees history as so many old folks on a bench feeding pigeons in outdated clothing, with nothing to contribute to sales and progress now. Such a view is partly healthy to human growth and lifecycle; if there were nothing in growing up to look forward to other than reliving the lives of one's parents, there would be little stimulus for invention and excitement in one's own life. But in the post-modern era, history is doubly made the relic because style has been added to technology as the measure of time. In such a world, the past is "old-fashioned" and "outmoded." And because style generations are much shorter than human generations, the instantly receding past becomes even more quickly "old-fashioned" than it ever was. To a kid, even an older brother in his dated clothes becomes much older than his years -- another generation. In short, history is more easily and rapidly vanquished than ever. The utter plasticity of image manipulation has launched us into an age of recombinant generations, measured more by style than by traditional life cycles. The plasticity of dramatic exposition, of narrative assemblages of images and of their iconic condensations into trademarks, invents and recycles artificial cultures of style, stylized bits of history -- the "look" of the '50s, '60s, for example. As an information source, this stream-text replaces the history of evidence and archaic text. Generated in electronics editing studios by people trained in narrative excitation, it is fluid and plastic, the recombinant text of style-mongers. And its history, stored in canned bits of the past, is cued up from its own flow and recombined for dramatic effect. All history is derived from our segmentation and recombination of the past, but in electronic historicism, the evidence and the effect are entirely dramatic. Nourishing its audiences on preceding generations of style and drama which they recognize, style history contains a new kind of dramatic irony in which history is contained within style, rather than the other way around. Recognition and irony are based on familiarity with the trademark, the character or the gag in their dramatic, rather than their historic, contexts, less significant as evidence than as innuendo. (When an audience, so informed, says "I get it," they might indeed rush out and get it. Such is the power of the recombinant electronic metaphor.) The tragic or the comic, insofar as they are human, are stylized types and caricatures, rather than real figures of history. Amidst the worldwide collision of images, where real-time condenses into a concatenation of occasions whose value is defined more in terms of their dramatic relationship to one another than to historical-cultural contexts, then there has emerged a peculiarly "retro"-modern type of dramatic irony and, thus, a new historicism. Perhaps this is the death-knell of post-modernism -- the moving from the irony of post-modernism into a "retro"-modern recycling of the "views" of the past. We now fast-forward through time. When electronics technologies merge with the relentless drive of commercialism to create by images new markets, and when news reporting is global and instantaneous, information becomes a glut. Amidst this noise, where are the signals? How might we sort -- or is it any longer necessary -- the real from the fictive, the wars and the space shots from the movie sets? Everything claims meaning, begs for meaning. Signifying what? Where are the historical and cultural contexts which provide the grounds for comparison over time? Against what should good and evil be compared? The local, the past or an infinity of momentary options? There is among us all a growing illiteracy, and a growing cultural illiteracy, along with a growing dependency on electronic media and their reflexive programming, their discourse of personality and knee-jerk reaction. Trademarks, slogan-ism and 'sound bytes' have created an environment of minimalist thinking, self-reflexive and crudely iconic, where knowledge is based more on trademark histories, political cameos, comparisons to television shows and computer games and other such "inside" jokes rather than on product history or historical or cultural contexts. Present-day and future marketing battles are at least as much about 'brandwidth' as bandwidth. Moreover, the gap between that minimalist environment and an increasingly specialized scientific and professional discourse is huge and widening. The mediators of this gap are usually the image-traders of commercialism, our culture's "translators" of the specialized technology behind the commercialism. Because their job is to create the desire fueling the purchase of dreams and lotteries, they are the wrong translators. Someone needs to stand outside the showroom. If the new historicism collapses generations to the eternally "new!" present, and if in trying to look up-to-date, buy up-to-date, and work up-to-date, then we not only lose our grip on the past, but we exhaust ourselves in the clutter of reinvention. Whether we will exhaust our environment or our health in a culture and economy of such relentless competition and reinvention is one of the most intriguing issues of our time. In this gap between the specialized and the instant discourse, in the world of relentless stream-text, there is a keen need for informed conversation, for exchange which is expansive rather than reductive, reflective rather than reflexive, a dialogue rather than serial soliloquies. In an age where spaces for physical, personal contact and discourse may indeed be shrinking, and electronic, edited discourse expanding, we need to ask ourselves how best to manage what kinds of information. The answers will determine how we share and act on our agendas in the information age -- in short, how we arrive at quality decisions based on quality of, and personal exchange of, information. We need to find a personalized space, where people are aware of one another's needs as human beings, and we need to enrich the quality of exchange that takes place there. The humanities are not merely the texts of such informed exchanges with our past and our present, they are the process by which these texts are formulated, shared and examined because what underlies them is not answers, but questions and time for reflection. They do not guarantee wisdom, but they are the tools for seeking it, and the chronicle, for all, of the search. -- Rick Knupfer,
Executive Director Mideast Culture Focus of March 3 Teacher Workshop
Coinciding with the end of the Michigan Council for the Social Studies annual conference March 1-2 in Lansing, the workshop will also feature a hands-on training session exploring Michigan Humanities Council's newly updated ROADS Culture Kit on the Middle East. Shabbas, founder and director of the non-profit organization, AWAIR: Arab World And Islamic Resources http://www.dnai.com/~gui/awairproductinfo.html of Berkeley, CA, will examine in detail the cultural geography of the Middle East, focusing on Arabic history, family life and women, in addition to recommending books and materials especially helpful for teaching about the modern Arab period. Special attention will be paid to techniques for effectively communicating this new knowledge to students. Attendees will participate in hands-on activities and practice quizzes they can take back to their students. The principal reference is the 540-page Arab World Studies Notebook, edited by Ms. Shabbas. The Middle East Policy Council will makes this resource available to workshop participants for $15. Designed by teachers and scholars and available for loan from Michigan Humanities Council's Resource Center, the Middle East Culture Kit educational resource packages represent a multimedia, interdisciplinary approach to exploring the heritage and traditions of the Middle East. Kits for K-6 and 7-12 include:
"This is a wonderful and rare opportunity for Michigan teachers to learn more about Middle Eastern history and cultures," said LuAnn Kern, the Council's director of grants and education. "Audrey Shabbas' visit to Michigan beautifully complements the Council's release of the newly updated ROADS Culture Kits on the Middle East. We guarantee teachers will be better informed and better equipped to begin exploring the Middle East with their students." Teachers
of all subjects and grade levels as well as administrators, librarians
and clergy are encouraged to attend the workshop. Secondary-school teachers
in the social studies, however, are the primary focus since this is the
grade level at which "The Middle East" is usually studied Registration
fee ($25) includes lunch and teacher resource packets including the new
curriculum manual to the ROADS Culture Kit on the Middle East. To register
for "Exploring Middle Eastern Cultures," complete the form on the Council's
web site (http://michiganhumanities.org/teachwkshop.html)
and return it with the registration fee to the Council's Lansing office
by Feb. 26. On-line registrations will be accepted at tourmihum@voyager.net
if checks are mailed in advance of the workshop. Registrants will receive
a confirmation, map and additional information about the workshop.
Five new members join Michigan Humanities Council for its Feb. 2 meeting in Ann Arbor. Marketing consultant Claudia Bleil of Grand Rapids has been affiliated with the Grand Rapids Civic Theatre and most recently with the Michigan Theatre of Jackson, where she was executive director. An interdisciplinary humanities graduate of Michigan State University, she has been active in nonprofit cultural and civic organizations in marketing and fund-raising roles. Semi-retired, Herbert L. Jones of Okemos has turned his extensive experience in public relations and professional fundraising into a consultant role serving nonprofit organizations. Before moving to Michigan, he directed development activities for the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and public relations for Butler University in Indiana. His degree in sociology is from Iowa Wesleyan College. Entrepreneur-philanthropist David Handleman of Birmingham has been involved in the music-media industry as well as active on the boards of charitable and cultural organizations such as Michigan Opera Theatre, the Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts and Detroit Public Television. He attended the University of Arizona. Former executive director of the Ronald McDonald House of Detroit, Michael H. Margolin of Detroit has served in management roles with metro-Detroit medical and human services organizations since the 1970s. He has been an active voice in arts reporting and advocacy in southeastern Michigan. He has an undergraduate degree from Wayne State University, a Master of Social Work degree from the University of Michigan and has studied for Council of Fund-Raising Executives accreditation. Janet E. Rubin of Saginaw is a professor of theatre at Saginaw Valley State University, where she has been on the faculty since 1983 and is chair of its Department of Theatre. Her extensive background in theatre directing and acting includes interest in children's theatre and the relationship between drama and the Holocaust. Her degrees in dramatic arts are from Pennsylvania State University and the University of Connecticut and her Ph.D. in humanities education is from Ohio State University. Each new member has been elected by the Council for a four-year term, serving in a variety of capacities including program and proposal review, planning, fund-raising, advocacy for the public humanities, liaison to projects and other representation of the Council in public activities. Members
who departed from Council service in 2000 are William Anderson of Ludington,
Sheila Cannatti of Battle Creek, Gloria Coles of Flint, Maureen Eke of
East Lansing, Gwen Etter-Lewis of Portage, June Bos Hamersma of Grand
Rapids, Doug Haneline of Big Rapids and Molly Paquin of St. Ignace. We
thank them for their expertise, enthusiasm and dedicated participation
in the statewide work of the Council. Directory of Scholars Gets Skills to the Field! In partnership with the Michigan Council for Arts & Cultural Affairs, Michigan Humanities Council is updating the directory of Michigan Sponsors of Arts & Cultural Programs. The directory is a networking resource for organizations for planning and hosting live cultural programs and a marketing tool for performing artists and humanities "informers" seeking placement of their programs in cultural venues. It is available free from the Council office and at locations around the state. Organizations that have hired an artist or humanities presenter to perform, present and/or exhibit in the past three years may apply for inclusion in the directory. Deadline: Feb. 16. Application
forms for both mail-in or on-line submission are available on the Council's
web site http://michiganhumanities.org/culturelink For more
information, contact Jan Fedewa or Anne DeMarco of the Arts and Humanities
Touring Program in the Council's Lansing office at 517/372-7770. Resource Center Guide Now Available Listings of Media & Exhibit Library resources available for rental offer a wide range of opportunities to examine topics close to home or from other corners of our "global village." Teachers, librarians, community service organizations and youth groups will find ample reasons for exploring ethnic heritage and cultures using ROADS Culture Kits. Information about the Resource Center's new membership program and its growing roster of scholars is tucked into this reference guide, as are overviews of what the Arts & Humanities Touring Program and the Council's web site can provide to users statewide. A summary of the Council's resources and the extensively detailed offerings on the Council's web site, this new print guide is available by request to the Resource Center at 517/372-7770 or by e-mail: resources@voyager.net. Once you've explored the resources available, consider scheduling a mid-winter or spring program around one of the Resource Center's monthly themes: February - "African-American Heritage"; March - "Women's History & Heritage," or April - "Reflecting on Language & Literature." For suggestions about resources appropriate for each theme, consult the Council's Resource Center web pages (http://www.michiganhumanities.org/resources/) or create your own unique package using materials listed there that meet your needs. Order on-line; we ship statewide. For K-12 teachers, curriculum specialists, home-school parents, librarians/media specialists, program directors, researchers, Extension personnel or college/university faculty, a Resource Center membership can facilitate this process. Individuals join for an annual $25 fee and organizations for $100, gaining unlimited access to the Media & Exhibit Library's collection of hundreds of circulating resources - VHS-videocassettes, audiocassettes, slide presentations, curriculum manuals and poster panel exhibits. Resource Center members also receive a $25 discount on all Culture Kit rentals. Watch for
Resource Center staff at several educators' conferences in Michigan during
March! Resource Center Offers Memberships As part of the Council's efforts to upgrade Resource Center services to its users statewide, it initiates an annual Resource Center membership plan this month that promises more educational value for users' dollars. Why a membership plan for resource users? The Council recognizes that time and money are often in short supply. So, for annual fees of just $25 for individuals and $100 for organizations (i.e., an individual school, college or university department, religious or service organization, community or senior citizen center, museum, public library, hospital, government office, etc.), Resource Center members will gain unlimited access to the Media & Exhibit Library's collection of hundreds of circulating resources. In addition, Resource Center members receive a $25 discount on all ROADS Culture Kit rentals. Resource Center memberships are available on an annual basis, running from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30. Pro-rated six-month memberships are available each March. Teachers
(K-12), curriculum specialists, home school parents, librarians/media
specialists, program directors, researchers, Extension personnel or college/university
faculty are among those most likely to benefit from Resource Center membership
privileges. To become a Resource Center member, call the Council's Lansing
office today and start saving!
Fall Grants Support Eight State Projects Community pride, cultural diversity and educational initiatives were the focus of eight projects funded in fall, 2000, by Michigan Humanities Council under its Collaborative Projects in Communities grant program. A total of $94,750 in direct funding to nonprofit educational and cultural organizations and $20,765 in funds to match gifts they raise support these humanities projects:
Heritage Tourism Honors for Culture Tour Michigan's Great Outdoors Culture Tour, a partnership cultural tourism project of Michigan Humanities Council and Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, has been recognized by two national organizations for contributions to heritage tourism in Michigan. The six-week summer initiative, begun in 1998, garnered recognition from the Chief of the U.S. Forest Service in late November for its work with Michigan's three National Forests. The Forest Service's national "Window on the Past" heritage award recognized excellence in "showcasing natural and cultural heritage" through evening arts and humanities programs in forest campgrounds and at its historic sites. In 2000, 94 Culture Tour programs drew more than 8,500 persons at national, state and local parks, forests and other community venues in northern Lower Michigan and the Upper Peninsula. This spring, the Culture Tour will be among 25 cultural tourism "success stories" highlighted in a 80-page, four-color publication of the Heritage Tourism office of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. A feature article will highlight Michigan's two statewide arts and humanities councils' collaboration with state and federal natural resource agencies, community historical and interpretive organizations, corporate and foundation funders and private cultural performers/presenters that is at the heart of the Culture Tour's success and popularity. The tour also will be included in the Trust's heritage tourism workshop materials. Michigan's
Great Outdoors Culture Tour kicks off its fourth summer season in the
north July 1-Aug. 12 with 94 programs by 20 cultural presenters. A complete
schedule of 2001 Culture Tour programs and sites will be available in
April in print and on the Council's web site (http://michiganhumanities.org).
Contact the Council's northern office at 906/789-9471 or e-mail paomihum@voyager.net
for more information. New 2002-2005 Grants Program Begins Sept. 1 The new Grants Program of Michigan Humanities Council for 2002-2005, "Creating Vision for the New Century: The Humanities and the Strengthening of Michigan's Communities," continues to emphasize Council interest in collaboration among cultural, educational and community-based organizations and institutions to serve Michiganians with public humanities projects that help communities face challenges of the 21st century. The new 2002-2005 program seeks to meet the needs of applicant organizations of different kinds, sizes and varying levels of expertise, provide suitable incentive for larger institutions with humanities resources to use them off-site or off-campus and encourage non-profit entrepreneurship. Along with the recently implemented Quick Grants (small grants of up to $500 designed to match humanities resources with local needs), the following new grants reflect the Council's determination to expand and sustain access of Michiganians to the humanities by making the best possible use of federal support and non-federal support and by strengthening programs through the power achieved in partnerships. Beginning with the Sept. 1 deadline, applicants may submit proposals under the following new categories of Collaborative and Networking Grants: Public Humanities Development Grants are designed for organizations wishing to plan and/or create a significant public humanities project with the capacity to reach multiple sites or an identified network of users, or to draw underserved audiences. Examples: a university archive that creates a traveling exhibit on Latino workers and conducts supplementary programming in three communities; a historical society that develops K-12 curricular materials and a national web site database featuring the life of Sojourner Truth. Grant maximum: $15,000. Extending the Reach Grants are designed to take an established and/or previous Council-funded, successful program into other venues for new or underserved audiences, multiple sites or networks of the applicant's defining. Funding targeted for distribution expenses. Example: an exhibit on the history of county fairs that is displayed at other fairs in northern Michigan counties. Grant Maximum: $7,500. Local Network Grants are intended for communities, areas or local cultural organizations seeking funding for new local/regional collaborative efforts for planning and/or joint programming for new projects reaching new audiences. Examples: a local writers guild might team up with area arts council to develop joint programs for a community festival; area cultural and natural resource organizations might form an alliance to plan humanities cultural tourism activities. Grant maximum: $15,000. General Humanities Grants support public humanities programs on miscellaneous topics that clearly fall outside the other grant categories. Examples: a community lecture series or reading and discussion program. Grant maximum: $3,000. Beginning with the Sept. 1 deadline, all grants will be available at all four grant deadlines dates: Jan. 15 (notification March 15), April 15 (notification June 15), June 15 (notification Aug. 15) and Sept. 1 (notification Nov. 1). As always, the Council encourages applicants to submit draft proposals for staff review and assistance; all draft proposals are due at least two weeks before the deadline date. Current grant guidelines remain in effect through the April 15 and June 15, 2001 grant deadlines only. The new
2002-2005 Grant Program guidelines and application forms will be released
at the Council's Public Meeting and Grant Writing Workshop Feb. 5, 1-4
p.m. at the Michigan Library and Historical Center, Lansing; register
to attend by calling 800/837-4532 or on-line at the Council's web site
(http://michiganhumanities.org).
Guidelines and forms also will be available on the Council's web site.
Touring Program: Apply for Second Period Grants "Applications
for the second round of 2001 grant-making under Michigan's Arts and Humanities
Touring Program will be accepted at the Council's Lansing office between
Feb. 15 and March 25 for programs occurring between April 1 through Sept.
30. Fiscal year 2001 is the first time that the popular Touring Program
grants have been dispersed under two grant periods. In the first period
of awards for programs occurring between Oct. 10-March 31, more than $77,000
in grants was distributed to local Michigan organizations in support of
448 live cultural presentations; a full list of awardees is found on the
Council's web site (http://www.michiganhumanities.org/projects/00_01_gr.html
). Michigan Humanities Council, a nonprofit organization, administers
Michigan's Arts and Humanities Touring Program in partnership with the
Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs (MCACA), a state agency.
Touring Program awards totalling $77,085 went to 216 of 225 applicants
eligible for funding, including 136 preschool and K-12 educational applicants
(62. 6 percent). Awardees anticipated serving 25,334 adults and 81,095
youth at funded programs. First-period grants reached 21 of 45 counties
considered "underserved" by the state arts agency - areas in which residents
have limited access to arts and cultural programs, services or resources
primarily because of location, economic condition and/or cultural background.
Other underserved populations include at-risk youth, nursing home residents
and physically and emotionally challenged students. Touring Program grants
support live presenters - musicians, storytellers, theater companies,
speakers and dancers - and visual arts programs from the new 2000-2003
Arts & Humanities Touring Directory, hosted and sponsored by community
schools, libraries, museums, festivals, arts councils and other nonprofit
organizations. Grants are made in two categories: those providing up to
$250 for programs whose fees and expenses are $725 or less and larger
grants up to 35 percent of fees and expenses when program costs exceed
$725. The 2000-2003 Arts & Humanities Touring Directory is available from
Michigan Humanities Council or can be accessed on-line at the Council's
web site: http://michiganhumanities.org . Some listings at that site now
include audio and/or video samples of presenters' programs. Touring Program
Director Jan Fedewa reminds second-period applicants to be sure to complete
the entire application - found in the back of the directory or available
for downloading on the web site - and include required attachments when
submitting it before the March 25 closing date. Questions? Contact her
at 517/372-7770 or e-mail jfedewa@voyager.net.
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"Yesterday's
Tomorrows" presents an historical overview of popular expectations
and beliefs about the future from the late 19th century to today, exploring
past perceptions of the future of home, community and transportation and
the media's role in creating them. It is the third exhibition of its kind
to tour Michigan under the MOMS partnership: "Produce for Victory:
Posters on the American Homefront, 1941-1945" toured the state in
1997-98, and "Barn Again! Celebrating an American Icon" visited
from June, 1999, through April, 2000. Visit the Council's web site 
Michigan
Humanities Council, in cooperation with the Middle East Policy Council,
will host Audrey Shabbas, a nationally recognized instructor on the Arab
world and the Middle East, as speaker at a March 3 teacher workshop,"Exploring
Middle Eastern Cultures." The workshop will run from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
at the Michigan Library and Historical Center in Lansing. 
Page
through the new Resource Center guide to educational resources for community
and school programs, and you'll likely come up with a host of ways that
Michigan Humanities Council can assist your programming for 2001. It's
packed with visually and topically colorful ways to explore the humanities
with audiences of all ages.