Eudora Welty once wrote that one of her greatest challenges as a writer was making the imaginative jump into a character’s mind, heart and skin. This summer, during a workshop hosted by Millsaps College and the Eudora Welty House, K-12 educators from across the country will take a plunge into the world that sparked the imagination of a major American writer.
The workshop, Eudora Welty’s Secret Sharer: The Outside World and the Writer’s Imagination, is one of only 20 programs funded nationwide by the National Endowment for the Humanities in its Landmarks of American History and Culture Series.
"The goal of our Landmarks Workshop is to give school teachers an in-depth experience with important topics in American history, an experience they can then share with their students,” said Bruce Cole, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
“Millsaps College's Landmark Workshop provides participants the opportunity to examine the work of Eudora Welty, a truly great American author, and enhance their teaching by incorporating a thorough exploration of her life and writings."
Suzanne Marrs, Welty’s biographer and Welty Foundation Scholar-in-Residence at Millsaps, will direct the workshop that includes sessions by well-known historians and literary critics. They include Peggy Prenshaw, Minrose Gwin, Alferdteen Harrison, Michael Kreying, Leslie McLemore, Rebecca Mark, Pearl McHaney, Noel Polk, Harriet Pollack and Charles Sallis.
“I hope encountering Eudora Welty’s world will excite participants and suggest new ways of approaching Welty’s fiction,” Marrs said. “And I hope our workshop will help teachers to link the study of literature to the concrete world of a writer’s daily experience.”
Workshop participants will visit Welty’s home and garden, the Medgar Evers House and the Mississippi Agriculture and Forestry Museum in an effort to understand how experiencing actual places can enhance one’s understanding of Welty’s fiction and the Mississippi in which she lived.
Each educator selected to participate in the weeklong workshop, offered July 6-11 or July 20-25, will receive a $500 stipend and a travel supplement. Applications must be postmarked by March 17 and awards will be announced on April 16.
More information and application guidelines are available at the Welty’s Foundation website, www.eudorawelty.org/neh.html.
