Katie Moulder (left) is headed to Seattle while Nicole Sarrocco will spend a week in the Mississippi Delta.
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Humanities instructors Katie Moulder and Nicole Sarrocco have won grants to attend summer programs in the Landmarks in American History and Culture Workshops series sponsored by The National Endowment for the Humanities.
Katie Moulder, who teaches American Studies and Western Civilizations, will participate in the one-week session, “From Immigrants to Citizens: Asian Pacific Americans in the Northwest” in Seattle this July. The workshop will focus on the hidden histories of the Asian Pacific American pioneers, from the earliest Native Hawaiians who navigated the Pacific Coast and worked for the Hudson Bay Trading Company in the early 1800s to the immigrant laborers who built the infrastructure of the region’s major cities through World War II. Participating teachers will have access to archival documents and first person narratives housed at the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience, meet individuals who have lived the history, and visit living cultural communities around the Pacific Northwest.
“I’m excited to learn about a part of American history — the experiences and contributions of Asian and Pacific Islanders to American identity — about which I know very little,” Moulder says. “And I’ve never been to Seattle, so I’m looking forward to exploring the city — and getting out of the South during the heat of the summer.”
Nicole Sarrocco teaches American Studies, Southern Literature and Culture, and Fiction Writing and Poetry Writing. She’ll attend the one-week workshop, “The Most Southern Place on Earth: Music, History, and Culture of the Mississippi Delta,” in Cleveland, Mississippi, this June. The workshop will study place in its fullest sense, from the Delta’s contributions to music, literature, journalism, political action, foodways, and sports heroes as well as its geography, landscape, history of immigrant settlements, business, and more. Participants can dine on fried catfish, okra, even fried dill pickles. The teachers will look at how place can be read as text, a lesson they can then bring back to their students.
“I’m very excited to attend this program in the Mississippi Delta,” Sarrocco says. “I know this opportunity to spend time in the birthplace of the Blues will enrich my Southern Literature and Culture class here at NCSSM.”