Multi-Day Seminars

Fall 2025 Multi Day Schedule

The application period will open March 10, 2025 and close March 31, 2025. An application link will be posted here on March 10, 2025.

The American Revolution

Niagara Falls, NY | August 4-6, 2025

One of the enduring puzzles of the American Revolution is how American colonists, once loyal to the king and enthusiastically attached to their status as British subjects, could by 1776 stand willing to declare their independence and wage a war to secure it. This five-session seminar uses primary sources to examine the principles and philosophies that formed the basis of American colonists’ loyalty to Britain as well as their protests against measures instituted by Parliament in the aftermath of the 1754-63 French and Indian War. It examines the escalation of the imperial crisis, the efficacy of Britain’s responses to colonial resistance, and the difficulties armed conflict posed for both the British Army and troops fighting for the self-declared independent United States, which seemingly surmounted great odds to defeat (or at least outlast) the most powerful military in the world. 

West Coast Immigration

Angel Island, CA | August 6-8, 2025

This seminar will focus on immigration to the West Coast of the United States from the mid-to-late 1800s to the present day. Using a mixture of primary source documents, memoirs, and short fiction, we will study topics such as Chinese immigration and exclusion, Japanese immigration and internment during World War II, refugees from Southeast Asia in the 1970s and 1980s, and Mexican-American immigration throughout the 20th century.

Native American Leadership, Identity, and Resistance

Mashantucket, CT | August 12-14, 2025

This seminar explores the evolving dynamics of Native American leadership, identity, resistance, and negotiation in the face of colonial expansion, cultural suppression, and modern struggles for sovereignty. Through historical speeches, firsthand accounts, legal battles, and activism, these readings offer a multifaceted understanding of how Indigenous leaders have balanced autonomy, cultural preservation, and adaptation over time. This conference will also have the added value of taking place at the Pequot Museum, one of the signature Native American museums in the United States.

The World Wars and the American State

Indianapolis, IN | August 13-15, 2025

The World Wars unleashed destruction on such a massive scale, and in such a short period of time, that the nation-states involved were all pressured to make extraordinary efforts to marshal the total resources at their disposal to survive and seek victory. The demands of  these total wars would fundamentally transform the American State, as the federal government, particularly the executive branch, took unprecedented powers to enlist millions of its citizens into the armed forces and to turn the United States’ immense industrial capacity into what Franklin Roosevelt called “the arsenal of democracy.”  This seminar will examine the effects that transformation had on the American state, on the constitutional balance between the branches of government and between the federal and state governments, and on the relationship of citizens to the state.

George Washington as Founder

Alexandria, VA | August 22-24, 2025

This colloquium will center on the role and ideas of George Washington as one of the key figures in America’s Founding. The sessions will all focus on Washington’s writings and discussions of his contributions to liberty and self-government in the United States. The overall theme will be that Washington acted consciously and conscientiously.

Susan B. Anthony & Reform in Rochester

Rochester, NY | September 12-14, 2025

Rochester and its nearby communities were home to many reform movements in the nineteenth- century, including the temperance, abolition, and women’s rights movements. Susan B. Anthony was at the center of them.   This seminar will examine the emergence of the women’s rights movement in the early nineteenth century and its relationship to the temperance and the abolition movements.

The West in History and Memory

Oklahoma City, OK | September 26-28, 2025

The seminar will feature period readings on the historical and cultural treatment of the American West. We will discuss how the portrayal of the West changed over time, and what assumptions and attitudes drove that shifting imagery.

Japanese Internment and the American Experience

Cody, WY | October 3-5, 2025

Japanese internment is often considered the darkest aspect of America’s involvement in World War II.  The study of what happened to the Japanese people living in the United States allows us to explore the most fundamental parts of the American experience.  Law, pluralism, immigration, citizenship, war, racism, and the history of the western United States all intersected in Cody, Wyoming.

This program will be conducted as a discussion, using primary sources as the only readings.  Professor Stephen Tootle will moderate the conversation.  Participants in the seminar are encouraged to read all of the documents in advance and to be ready with questions and thoughts.  Educators will receive a Letter of Attendance at the conclusion of the seminar.

The Underground Railroad

Cincinnati, OH | October 3-5, 2025

Few topics have captured our imaginations more than the Underground Railroad. Why did stories about secret codes, hiding places, and narrow escapes via a clandestine freedom network become more popular as the nation retreated from Reconstruction? How has recent scholarship complicated our understanding of the Underground Railroad? What can we learn from primary sources? When did the Civil War really commence? This seminar seeks to peel away mythology and gain greater knowledge of not only the Underground Railroad but also of the legacies of slavery and the abolition movement.

9/11: Causes and Consequences

Dallas, TX | October , 2025

The seminar examines the events leading up to the attacks on September 11 and the American response. Among the topics it covers are the rise of militant Islam, the American response to international terrorism, the Patriot Act, intelligence failures, the U.S. attack on the Taliban, the subsequent war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, and the consequences of the attacks for American politics.

Freedom, Virtue, & Resistance in African American Political Thought 

Oakland, CA | October 17-19, 2025

In this seminar, we will explore the views of several African American thinkers on fundamental political questions such as: what is freedom? How can freedom be achieved and preserved? What virtues are necessary to achieve and preserve a free society? What forms of resistance are necessary to achieve and preserve freedom? Over the course of our time together, we will read excerpts from several key figures in the African American tradition, including Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Ida B. Wells, James Baldwin, and Audre Lorde.

The Cold War

Simi Valley, CA | October 24-26, 2025

In this seminar, which features a tour of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, we will use a variety of primary sources, including items from the Reagan Library, to discuss key events in the Cold War. Spanning almost a half-century, the Cold War had its origins in World War II, a conflict that brought the United States and the Soviet Union together as allies. How and why did this partnership fall apart? We will address this significant problem in our first session, then turn our attention to the impact of the Cold War on the home front, with special attention to Soviet espionage inside the United States, the rise of Senator Joseph McCarthy, and civil defense. The American determination to prevent the spread of communism led to wars in Korea and Vietnam and the use of covert operations against foreign governments. In our examination of the late Cold War, we will focus on President Reagan’s efforts to weaken the Soviet Union but also his goal to cooperate with its last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, especially on arms control. In our final session, we will trace the rapid succession of events—some expected, others quite surprising—that finally brought a peaceful end to the Cold War.

Richard Nixon and Contemporary American Politics

Yorba Linda, CA | November 7-9, 2025

This seminar will examine Richard Nixon’s Presidency and its long-term consequences for the separation of powers in American Politics. Though Americans were accustomed to a strong presidency that acted unilaterally both in domestic and foreign policy, Nixon’s presidency produced a strong reaction from Congress and the American people as a whole. We will examine Nixon’s policy agenda, as well as his use of presidential power, and the reaction that it sparked.

From Brown v. Board to Little Rock and Beyond: School Desegregation and the Civil Rights Movement

Little Rock, AR | November 7-9, 2025

The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court ruling was a landmark decision, but the battle to enforce its directives was only beginning. The faceoff between state and federal priorities at Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957 demonstrated that the decision’s constitutional mandate would require the dedication and courage of ordinary heroes—young African Americans, their parents, and allies—all determined to equality of access to public education a reality for everyone. The Little Rock Nine succeeded in desegregating Central High, but is that the end of the story? In this seminar featuring a visit to the National Historic Site at Central High, we will use a variety of primary sources to learn about and discuss the legal campaign of the NAACP to put school segregation before the Supreme Court, the constitutional issues of the cases, the effort to enforce Brown in Little Rock, and the long, difficult effort to desegregate schools elsewhere in the United States after Little Rock.

The United States-Mexico War, 1846-1848

San Antonio, TX | November 14-16, 2025

The United States’s annexation of Texas in 1845 sparked an international crisis of sovereignty with neighboring Mexico. Each nation disputed precisely where the border divided both republics, producing a war waged between 1846 and 1848. With military triumph in 1848, the United States acquired from Mexico the vast western lands stretching from Texas to the Pacific Ocean. The swift procurement initiated a great national debate on whether slavery could spread into the new federal territories, leading to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ominous prediction, “Mexico will poison us.”

A New South: Industrialism and Race in the Postbellum South

Birmingham, AL | November 21-23, 2025

In the wake of the Confederacy’s defeat, some white leaders of the South sought to modernize the region by promoting 1) sectional reconciliation, 2) a resolution to the region’s race problem, and 3) the creation of a new economic order based on industry, commerce, and a diversified agricultural system. In short, these leaders advocated for the creation of a New South. But was the New South really different from the Old South? This seminar will seek to answer this question by examining the motives and results of the New South movement.

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