From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History:

"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 Using an array of historical documents as well as lectures, discussions and visits to historical sites, seminar members will analyze the way a war of unprecedented scope drove a process of state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, we 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 in the 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."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History:

"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."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History:

"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 we will use to explore the subjects addressed in the seminar."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website:

"This seminar examines the era of the American Civil War, with emphasis on its origins, scope, and consequences. Through lectures, class discussion, examination of historical texts, and visits to historic sites, the instructors and participants will examine the central role of slavery, the ways in which military and civilian affairs intersected and influenced one another, the question of what the war left unresolved, and how Americans have remembered the conflict. In many ways, the issues that divided the nation during the Civil War era continue to resonate today. This seminar will seek to make those issues clear, while at the same time providing a sense of the drama and tragedy of this tumultuous period."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website:

"In 1776 Americans began a struggle to create an independent nation. In 1861, they began a struggle to preserve or splinter that nation. This seminar will examine the historical circumstances that led to the American Revolution and the drafting of the Constitution, focusing in part on the unresolved problems and conflicts that contributed to the coming of the Civil War. The history of these two great wars will be told through the stories of individual men and women who lived, and died, in defense of their cause."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website:

"The American Revolution did more than secure independence for thirteen American colonies—it gave antislavery organizing a moral legitimacy it had never had before. In Britain by the early nineteenth century, opposing the slave system could serve as a mark of virtue rather than evidence of eccentricity. The first emancipation schemes depended on efforts to strengthen the role of the imperial state in an era of weakening overseas authority, and the abolitionist movement as a whole derived its power from a profound yearning for moral worth in the aftermath of British defeat and American independence. This course will consider the disparate strands of the British Atlantic world and bring into focus shifting developments in the abolitionist movement."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website:

"High school and undergraduate survey courses on U.S. history before 1865 rightly treat the War of Independence and the Civil War as decisive events. Three other significant conflicts of the period, the French and Indian War, the War of 1812, and the Mexican-American War, rate mentions in the textbooks, but their events are usually treated cursorily, and their impacts are rarely considered, if they are mentioned at all. This seminar will demonstrate the powerfully ironic significance of these less well-known imperial wars by exploring the linkages between them and the far more familiar revolutionary civil wars that define this period in American history. For in fact the decisive victory of Britain and its colonists in the French and Indian War brought on the collapse of the British empire, just twelve years after the triumphal Peace of Paris (1763); the similarly decisive victory of the United States over Mexico, confirmed by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), precipitated the crises that led, in thirteen years' time, to the disintegration of the Union. The War of 1812, usually seen as having ended indecisively with the Treaty of Utrecht (1815), not only decided the fate of native peoples east of the Mississippi and lent a powerful impetus to the democratization of American electoral politics, but also created an ideological justification for warfare that endures in American political culture to the present day. Our exploration of these striking effects will, we hope, encourage the participants both to reconsider the dynamics of early American history and to re-think the contexts in which they discuss with their students the impact of warfare on the formation of the American Republic."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website:

"The ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in December 1865 abolished slavery in the United States, formally, officially, and legally. A century and a half after emancipation, however, the question of slavery still roils the waters of American life. This seminar, led by Ira Berlin, will view the development of chattel bondage in mainland North America from the perspective of the larger Atlantic world. Topics include the nature of the slave trade, the distinction between societies with slaves and slave societies, the evolution of plantation slavery, the transforming face of the Age of Revolutions, the remaking of slavery in the nineteenth century, and the current debate about the meaning of slavery for American life."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website:

"Thomas Jefferson is best known as the author of the American Declaration of Independence. Beginning with the imperial crisis that led to the separation of the thirteen colonies from Great Britain and their union as a confederation, this course will focus on Jefferson's political thought and career in order to gain a broad perspective on the founding of the United States and its early history. Professors Peter Onuf and Frank Cogliano will emphasize the geopolitical context of the revolutionaries' bold efforts to establish republican governments and federal union. Jefferson and his patriot colleagues were acutely aware of the international historical significance of their revolution and therefore profoundly anxious about its ultimate outcome and legacy.

By exploring the rich canon of his writings, participants will seek to better understand what the Revolution meant for Jefferson and Jefferson meant for the Revolution. Major themes will include federalism, foreign policy, constitutionalism and party politics, and race and slavery."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website:

"This seminar explores the history of the American antislavery movement, from its institutional and ideological origins in the post-Revolutionary era to the eve of the Civil War. A particular focus of the course will be the historical reality and mythology of the Underground Railroad, understood through the lives, strategies, writings, and fate of black abolitionists."