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.

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.

Professor Gordon Wood investigates George Washington's contributions to the creation of the American republic. The bicentennial of his death in 1999 sparked a reassessment of this extraordinary man and his times. He was commander in chief of the revolutionary army, a leader in the formation of the Constitution of 1787, and the first president of the new United States. Despite these great accomplishments, he remains strangely distant and inaccessible to us in the early 21st century. This brief but intensive course helps explain the sources and meaning of Washington's greatness.

This course examines the development of American political parties, focusing on the meaning of parties and historic moments in the rise and fall of political parties from the Founding era to the present. Topics may include realigning elections, changing coalitions within American parties, and the contemporary Democratic and Republican parties.

Having adopted a form of government, the Americans had to make it work. This course examines their efforts to do so, as the Republic took shape amidst foreign dangers, political conflict, westward expansion, and religious revivals.