This professional development opportunity will bring Texas teachers together with leading scholars to explore important constitutional issues in our nation's history. The program offers teachers the opportunity to work with leading scholars of U.S. history, political science, and law and share strategies for teaching with primary sources.

Thomas Jefferson is best known as the author of the American Declaration of Independence. Beginning with the imperial crisis that led to the separation and union of 13 British colonies in North America, 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 world 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 understand better 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.

The Progressive Era marked the modernization of the American state, the expansion of citizenship, the ascendancy of "big business," the transformation of American liberalism, and the development of a social politics. It was also the moment when the United States assumed the role of a world power, culminating in its participation in World War I and its role in negotiating the ambitious but flawed treaty that ended it. Taking exception to interpretations of the era that see "American exceptionalism," this seminar will explore the era and its reforms (and their limits) in the context of the larger global response to industrialization and urbanization under conditions of unregulated capitalism.

Through the Institute, teachers begin an investigation of the history of the Holocaust, the systematic, planned annihilation of European Jews and other groups by Nazi Germany from 1933–1945. Participants will also broaden their depth of knowledge about current genocides and continued episodes of man's inhumanity to man during the 20th and 21st centuries. The institute includes a wide range of age-appropriate resources and strategies being modeled through exploration of the best practices in an integrated teaching model. Educators will be equipped to return to their classrooms with the knowledge and pedagogical resources to teach in a manner that leads to an investigation of the ramifications of prejudice, racism, and stereotyping. Educators will examine what it means to be a responsible and respectful person for the purpose of encouraging tolerance of diversity in a pluralistic society and for nurturing and protecting democratic values and institutions.

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.

Professor David Kennedy examines the experience of the American people in the Great Depression and World War II. Lecture topics include the origins and impact of the Great Depression; the nature and legacy of the New Deal; the military and diplomatic dimensions of American participation in World War II; and the war's impact on American society. Special attention will be given to the historical debate about the Depression's causes; America and the Holocaust; the wartime internment of Japanese-Americans; and the use of atomic bombs against Japan.

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.

The ratification of the 13th 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 19th century, and the contemporary debate about the meaning of slavery for American life.