This workshop explores the American Revolution and the creation of the U.S. Constitution through the use of the National Constitution Center's innovative museum exhibits, lectures by leading scholars, interactive discussion, and visits to numerous historic landmarks.

This workshop explores the American Revolution and the creation of the U.S. Constitution through the use of the National Constitution Center's innovative museum exhibits, lectures by leading scholars, interactive discussion, and visits to numerous historic landmarks.

Designed especially for secondary school teachers of U.S. history, law, and civics/government, the institute will deepen participants' knowledge of the federal judiciary and of the role the federal courts have played in key public controversies that have defined constitutional and other legal rights. Participants will work closely throughout the institute with leading historians, federal judges, and curriculum consultants. Confirmed faculty include Michael Klarman, Kirkland & Ellis Professor, Harvard Law School and Jeffrey Rosen, Professor of Law, George Washington University.

To explore the theme of "Seeking Social Change Through the Courts," the institute will focus on these three landmark federal trials: Woman suffrage and the trial of Susan B. Anthony, Chinese Exclusions Acts and Chew Heong v. United States, and the desegregation of New Orleans schools and Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board.

At this workshop, educators will be joined by immigration scholars and public health historians, visit related historic sites in New York City that vividly tell the story of immigration in the early part of the 20th century, and investigate Ellis Island's unrestored hospital buildings with an architectural historian to uncover their significance. This workshop will specifically address the impact of the 1891 immigration legislation mandating health as a criterion for admission to the U.S., precipitating construction of the U.S. Public Health Service hospital on Ellis Island to screen and treat arriving immigrants.

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.

From the National Museum of the American Indian website:

"To Native peoples from the Chesapeake region, the Bay and its watershed are not only a natural resource but a central part of their cultural identities. Learn how the Great Shellfish Bay and its tributaries physically and spiritually sustained Native communities in the sixteenth century. Explore indigenous peoples' enduring connections to this fragile ecosystem and some of their current environmental partnerships to revitalize and protect the Chesapeake."

For more on the National Museum of the American Indian, refer to NHEC's Museums and Historic Sites entry.

The workshop investigates the interaction between Europeans and Native Americans in the struggle to control North America, both during the colonial era and the early years of American independence. Participants will study early French contact with the Iroquois Great League of Peace, warfare between France and Great Britain and the Iroquois caught in the middle, Patriot struggles against Loyalists and Indians during the American Revolution, and key battles fought at the Fort during the War of 1812, which resulted in the eventual dispossession of the Iroquois after that conflict.