Events

In creating what James Madison referred to as a “compound republic,” the framers of the U.S. Constitution established a political system that was bound to generate collisions between state and federal governments. This seminar will analyze disputes about the extent of federal and state authority throughout American History, beginning with the Federalists and anti-Federalists ratification […]

Women’s political, social, and economic status has undergone several transformations in American history. This seminar will explore readings and documents in those stages: Women of Reform and Revolution, Women in the Progressive Era and Voting Booths and Is Suffrage Enough – the Lasting Impact. This program will be conducted as a discussion, utilizing primary source […]

Our conversation will ponder the political developments in North America and the British empire surrounding the arguments for and against independence. This will include the Declaration of Independence, how the Revolutionary War as a military, social, and cultural event contributed to the development of the American nation and state, and the what the new country […]

Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. both argued that the proper foundation for civic education is the belief that America has a moral essence derived from the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and that America’s history and purpose—its past, present, and future—is the story of our struggle to live up to those principles. […]

Bringing together three of the nation’s sharpest wits – this seminar will trace how political humor evolved from colonial pamphlets and aphorisms to Gilded Age satire and early twentieth-century newspaper columns. Each man, in his own era, skewered power, and translated complex political debates into plainspoken insight that ordinary Americans could understand – and laugh […]

Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. both argued that the proper foundation for civic education is the belief that America has a moral essence derived from the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and that America’s history and purpose—its past, present, and future—is the story of our struggle to live up to those principles. […]

Following the Civil War, African American businessmen and women began to invest, build, and thrive despite white controlled financial and commercial networks. But what happened in the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma? Why will it become a target of racial massacre in 1921? Using primary documents we will read the stories of these entrepreneurs. This […]

Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. both argued that the proper foundation for civic education is the belief that America has a moral essence derived from the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and that America’s history and purpose—its past, present, and future—is the story of our struggle to live up to those principles. […]

Great fortunes were made in the late 19th Century and with this growth of industrialism came a desire to expand markets. How did nationalism inform the pro-imperialist arguments of Theodore Roosevelt? Were these arguments consistent with American principles? What were the arguments against imperialism and protectionism? This seminar will analyze these questions and consider the […]