From the Gilder Lehrman Institute:
Richard White, Margaret Byrne Professor of American History at Stanford University, explores the history of the American West in the 1930s and 1940s. He examines the broad transformations that took place in the West during the New Deal, but also draws attention to some deeper structures in the West that did not change during that time.
From the Gilder Lehrman Institute:
Orlando Patterson, John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard University, discusses the way in which the concept of freedom has shifted throughout American history. He talks about traditional public freedoms, like civil liberties, and how they are seen as separate from a highly privatized conception and experience of freedom in everyday life.
From the Gilder Lehrman Institute:
Jack Rakove, Professor of Political Science and Law at Stanford University, discusses the 18th-century origins of judicial independence. He outlines the progression of judicial power from its English origins, as an extension of royal authority, to its current formulation as an independent and coequal branch of government.
From the Gilder Lehrman Institute:
Historian Philip D. Morgan explores the core experiences of slavery itself, including life on the African coast and on sugar plantations in the new world. He discusses the wide range of experiences that an enslaved person might experience in different countries during the height of the transatlantic slave trade.
From the Gilder Lehrman Institute:
"Edward Ayers, President of University of Richmond, discusses how to define an 'era.' He reviews African American history and women's history throughout the 20th century to illustrate the fact that one event does not necessarily lead to another, and that history does not always follow a logical trajectory."
From the Gilder Lehrman Institute:
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph J. Ellis explores the life of George Washington. He discusses the difficulties of writing about Washington due to his well known aversion to revealing his personal thoughts. He presents theories about Washington's personality based on what has been documented about his early life.
From the Gilder Lehrman Institute:
Charles Mann's most recent book, 1491, won the U.S. National Academy of Sciences' Keck Award for the best book of the year. In this lecture he looks at new research on pre-Columbian America. He concludes that the Americas had actually been heavily populated and developed before the arrival of Columbus but then were rapidly depopulated by the introduction of numerous European and African diseases, giving Europeans the mistaken idea that their new land was a vast, empty wilderness.
From the Gilder Lehrman Institute:
What does the Constitution say about racial equality? Larry Kramer, Dean at Stanford Law School, explains the role of the Reconstruction amendments and the challenges faced by the Supreme Court in shaping civil rights legislation in the years before Brown v. Board of Education.
From the Gilder Lehrman Institute:
Elliott West, Distinguished Professor of the American West and the American Indian at the University of Arkansas, describes how guns and horses changed Native American culture, while European diseases ravaged the indigenous people of the New World who had no inherent immunity to them.
From the Gilder Lehrman Institute:
Stephanie McCurry, Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, discusses the impact of war and conscription on the emancipation of slaves throughout the Western Hemisphere. Often, slaves have been able to exploit the conditions of war—such as a lack of manpower—to their advantage.