Since 1994, the Gilder Lehrman Institute has offered premier professional development for K-12 history teachers in the form of Teacher Seminars. While seminars have ranged in duration, location, and content, they have consistently received praise from participating teachers, who value learning historical content from leading scholars to improve their own classroom teaching.

As we look forward to the first Teacher Seminar Summit, 3-Day Regional Seminars, and 6-Day Seminars in 2020, we also reflect on the dynamic history of the program through some of its most notable lead scholars.

ONE: DAVID BRION DAVIS

Professor David Brion Davis, who inspired Richard Gilder…

A conversation with 2020 Pace–Gilder Lehrman MA in American History Program professors about women’s history in America

Moderated by Jim Knable, Gilder Lehrman Institute Staff Writer

Jim Knable: Would you tell us about yourselves and the courses you’re teaching in 2020 for the Pace–Gilder Lehrman MA in American History Program, in which the students are all K-12 teachers?

Carol Berkin: I’m Carol Berkin, and I am teaching a course on “Women in the American Revolution” for the Pace–Gilder Lehrman program. I formerly was Presidential Professor of American History at Baruch College, and the Graduate Center of the City University of…

(Or, Don’t Keep All Your Family Photographs in a Damp Trash Bag in Your Basement and Other Advice from Archivists Who Have Seen It All.)

by Olivia Luntz

We know how to protect our most important digital files, diligently backing them up on the Cloud or a hard drive. But what steps should we take to preserve family documents and photos, to ensure they can be enjoyed for generations to come? Archivists and curators at the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History offer wisdom and advice based on how they preserve historical documents in the Gilder Lehrman Collection.

1. Something Is…

by David Brion Davis

First published on the website of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in 2012.

Abolitionism emerged in America as part of a massive fusion of reform movements related to religious revivals and dedicated to the goal of creating a righteous society capable of fulfilling America’s high ideals. [1] In part, the religious revivals and emergence of a reform-oriented “Benevolent Empire” was a response to drastic economic and social changes related to what historians term “the market revolution” and “the transportation revolution.” In the generation following the War of 1812, improved roads and especially canals opened…

by Ed Morales

First published in “The Hispanic Legacy in American History” (Winter 2019), the fifty-third issue of History Now, the online journal of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

When I first saw the word Latinx — best described as a gender-neutral term to designate US residents of Latin American descent — in print it seemed awkward and hard to pronounce. But rather than giving in to my first instinct, I came to embrace its futurist charms, realizing that it opened a path for an even greater inclusivity and acceptance of difference, one that had already defined us…

A Conversation with Erica Armstrong Dunbar and Tiya Miles, Co-Winners of the 2018 Frederick Douglass Book Prize

Moderated by Jim Knable

Erica Armstrong Dunbar and Tiya Miles are the co-winners of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize for 2018. The Douglass Prize was created jointly by the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University’s MacMillan Center and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York City.

Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge (Atria / 37 Ink) by Erica Armstrong Dunbar, the Charles and Mary Beard Professor…

by Manisha Sinha

First published in “Frederick Douglass at 200” (Winter 2018), the fiftieth issue of History Now, the online journal of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

On February 24, 1844, the Liberator printed an admiring report on Frederick Douglass’s “masterly and impressive” speech in Concord, New Hampshire. The fugitive slave was the master of his audience. Douglass, the writer fantasized, was like “Toussaint among the plantations of Haiti. . . . He was an insurgent slave, taking hold of the right of speech, and charging on his tyrants the bondage of his race.” In the two decades before the Civil…