This seminar focuses on the era of the American Civil War and especially on the revolutionary transformation of social and political life in that critical period of U.S. history. Using an array of historical documents as well as lectures, discussions, and (possibly) visits to historical sites, seminar members will analyze the way a war of unprecedented scope drove a process of state building and slave emancipation that reconfigured the nation and remade the terms of political membership in it. Starting with the Supreme Court's decision in the Dred Scott case in 1857 and ending with the constitutional amendments of the postwar period, the seminar will take up the key events and developments in the Union and the Confederacy, including secession, the destruction of slavery (on plantations and in the law), African-American enlistment, and popular politics North and South. By focusing throughout on the racial and gender terms of citizenship, the seminar makes clear what changed—and what did not—in American political life, while conveying a sense of the epic drama by which the United States was remade in the vortex of war.

The Gilder Lehrman Summer Seminars are designed to strengthen participants' commitment to high quality history teaching. Public, parochial, independent school teachers, and National Park Service rangers are eligible. These week-long seminars provide intellectual stimulation and a collaborative context for developing practical resources and strategies to take back to the classroom.

Participants in this course will explore American Indian history in North Carolina from the earliest evidence of human habitation in the state through first contact with Europeans, the Trail of Tears, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights Movement, and into the present day.

Students often hold incorrect ideas about Native Americans and, in particular, know very little about the history and culture of American Indians right here in North Carolina. Archaeological finds, creation stories, the writings of early European explorers, government documents and treaties, stories handed down through oral tradition, indigenous crafts, newspaper articles, and more will enrich exploration of key issues in Native American history in North Carolina.

Moreover, thoughtful articles and lively discussions will allow participants to address modern issues such as the needs of American Indian students in North Carolina classrooms and present-day controversies such as the use of Indian-themed mascots in school athletic programs.

Ten teachers from the United States will join teachers from the United Kingdom and Ghana to study the history and legacies of the Transatlantic Slave Trade under the direction of professors James Walvin and Stephanie Smallwood. The seminar will cover the history of African-European contact, the nature of African societies in the 15th to 18th centuries, the existing slave trading practices in Africa, the impact of the slave trade on regions of Africa, the character of the coastal trade in the forts and castles, the experience of the Middle Passage, and the numbers and experience of African arrivals in the Americas. Participants will be introduced to major scholarship as well as to the new online Transatlantic Slave Trade Database. The Middle Passages seminar will focus on both historical content and classroom pedagogy, and will include visits to historical and cultural sites in Ghana. Participating teachers will be expected to develop collaborative teaching units with their international partners.

The Cold War dominated the second half of the 20th century, but until recently the world had only an imperfect sense of what it was all about. Historians wrote about it, of necessity, from within the event they were seeking to describe, so that there was no way to know its outcome. And because only a few Western countries had begun to open their archives, these accounts could only reflect one side of the story. Cold War history, hence, was not normal history: it was both asymmetrical and incomplete. The end of the Cold War and the subsequent partial opening of Soviet, Eastern European, and Chinese archives have revolutionized the field. Everything historians thought they knew is suddenly up for reconsideration, whether because of the new documents available to them, or as a consequence of knowing how it all came out. Even as this happens, though, the memories of those who lived through the Cold War are rapidly fading, and a new generation of students has no memory of it at all. This seminar will seek to integrate the latest scholarly research on Cold War history and the ways in which that subject is presented in the classroom. The seminar will use a variety of means: lectures, books, documents, video documentaries, and the resources of the worldwide web. There will also be ample opportunity for participants to learn from one another, and for the presenters to learn from the participants. It will be, in short, a week of total immersion in the lengthy, occasionally dangerous, and (almost) always intriguing history of the Cold War, filled with debate and new information.

The Declaration of Independence of 1776 announced the entry of the United States onto the world stage and inaugurated a new genre of document that would be used by various groups in the following centuries to herald their arrival among "the Powers of the Earth." This seminar views the American Declaration from three global perspectives: first, by placing 1776 into the context of contemporary international and global connections; second, by examining the legacy of the Declaration in the century after 1776; and third, by analyzing other declarations of independence since 1776 for their debts to—and divergences from—the American model. The result should be an enriched understanding of the importance of the Declaration in world history, as well as a novel account of what was truly revolutionary about the American Revolution.

The purpose of this one-week summer seminar is to explore a pivotal period in American history. After the uneven prosperity of the 1920s, the Great Depression of the 1930s was a human catastrophe. But the economic crisis also led to dramatic social and cultural change as Americans reacted to hardship and adversity. Above all, the rise of the New Deal under Franklin Roosevelt reshaped the modern state in ways that remain controversial and at the historical core of political debates today.

Led by Patty Limerick, this seminar uses focused case studies to explore the larger picture of environmental history, a subject that has grown increasingly complex as historians deepen their understanding of the vast role of "anthropogenic change" (also known as "history") in reconfiguring the places and processes thought of as "natural." Much of the seminar explores the transformation of attitudes, from the assessment of North American landscapes and resources by early settlers to the recognition of the changing "baseline" of global warming, along with a reconsideration—and revision—of the usual polarity-pitting utilitarian approaches in opposition to preservationist approaches to the management of nature. With guest speakers drawn from the University of Colorado's widely respected environmental studies program, the roles of naturalists and scientists in shaping American thinking about nature will receive particular attention, as will changes in the production and consumption of energy, a fundamental matter in environmental history. The concluding field trip to Rocky Mountain National Park gives the themes of the lectures and discussions a down-to-earth grounding in a visit to one of the most popular units in the nation's public lands, while close attention to John McPhee's Encounters with the Archdruid provides a framework for drawing lessons from the past to enhance the quality of contemporary environmental decision-making.

This seminar explores the rise of Jim Crow in the United States and tracks it forward to its modern post-civil-rights manifestations. Seminar participants will work with a range of primary sources to interpret the shifting social, economic, political, psychological, and cultural trauma associated with this set of racial practices. Close attention will be paid to the effects of Jim Crow on both sides of the color line.

The American South plays a central role in American history, from the first permanent English colony through the election of 2008. This course will focus on key episodes when Southern history and the history of the nation intersected at particularly important points: the emergence and spread of slavery, the founding, the Civil War, the creation of segregation, and the civil rights struggle. The course will be taught in Richmond, Virginia, a city rich in museums and historic sites that the seminar will use to explore the subjects addressed in the seminar.