The Gilder Lehrman Institute welcomes you to spring with a host of new and familiar programs for teachers and students. We recount our recent events, offer news about our upcoming Lincoln Prize Ceremony and Gala, and celebrate our long partnership with the Council of Independent Colleges.

We are especially excited to tell you about our summer professional development, including Teacher Seminars and our inaugural Teacher Symposium at Gettysburg College. We look forward to seeing you in the coming months and, as always, providing you with all the American history resources you need.

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Summer Professional Development for Teachers

The Gilder Lehrman Institute’s summer professional development programs provide K–12 teachers the chance to engage in live conversations with renowned historians, watch lectures that explore key topics in American history, visit historic sites, and work hands-on with primary sources.

This summer, we are pleased to offer three unique PD opportunities for teachers in on-site, virtual, and hybrid models.

The Gilder Lehrman Teacher Symposium (On-Site)

July 9–12 at Gettysburg College (PA)

At our inaugural symposium at Gettysburg College, each participant will attend a series of lectures with one of eight renowned historians, six hours of pedagogy with a master teacher, book talks with scholars, and numerous in-person networking opportunities.

Learn more and register here.

Teacher Seminars (Virtual)

June–August

Each of our 21 weeklong virtual seminars will include live Q&As with eminent historians, up to fifteen hours of historian-led video lectures, lesson plans, and selected primary sources from the Gilder Lehrman Collection.

Select seminars also feature live programming provided in collaboration with museums and historic sites across the country.

Learn more and register here.

Reframing Lincoln Symposium (On-Site or Virtual)

July 25–29 at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum (IL)

Examine Lincoln’s beliefs and actions on issues such as emancipation, Black citizenship, and the growth of civil liberties in America. Teachers can apply to attend in-person or to participate from home.

Special Topics in History

Teachers registered for any of our summer PD programs are invited to join us for Special Topics in History, a virtual weekly series of interactive sessions, online tours and highlights from collections, and lectures and dialogue about trailblazing historical scholarship led by historians and staff at key collaborating organizations, including

• The American Jewish Historical Society
• The Choices Program at Brown University
• The Hingham Historical Society
• Historic Deerfield
• The National Civil Rights Museum
• The USS Midway Museum

Learn more about all the programs, including course and event topics and the scholars teaching them here.

Teachers, spread the word and share with your colleagues!

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Ongoing Professional Development for Teachers

Topical Professional Development On Demand

Our How Did We Get Here? series, which has been designed to provide teachers with tailored classroom resources on topics in American history that are relevant to current events, is now On Demand with new modules being added as the program continues into the spring of 2022.

Three How Did We Get Here? On Demand sessions are now available in the Gilder Lehrman Shop.

How Did We Get Here? On Demand: American Indian and Latina/Latino American Experiences, led by Lilia Fernandez, Rutgers University, and Donald L. Fixico, Arizona State University

This module features a lecture on key points in Latina/Latino history by Professor Lilia Fernandez and a lecture on American Indian tribal sovereignty, the gaming industry, and sacred sites by Professor Donald L. Fixico. It also includes expert advice for teaching these topics led by Gilder Lehrman Master Teachers April Vela and CherylAnne Amendola.

Gilder Lehrman Affiliate School teachers can find special pricing here.

How Did We Get Here? On Demand: The US Constitution, led by Alexander Keyssar, Harvard Kennedy School, and Akhil Reed Amar, Yale University

This module features a lecture on the origins and evolution of the Electoral College by Professor Alexander Keyssar and a lecture on key figures of the Early Republic by Professor Akhil Reed Amar. It also includes expert advice for teaching these topics led by Gilder Lehrman Master Teachers Angel Brea, Jermain Corbin, and Justin Emrich. 

Gilder Lehrman Affiliate School teachers can find special pricing here.

How Did We Get Here? On Demand: Race Relations and African American Experiences, led by Hasan Kwame Jeffries, The Ohio State University

This module features lectures on the era of Jim Crow and on the Long Civil Rights Movement by Professor Hasan Kwame Jeffries, along with expert advice for teaching these topics led by Gilder Lehrman Master Teachers Tim Bailey and Corey Winchester.

Gilder Lehrman Affiliate School teachers can find special pricing here.

Veterans Legacy Project

In partnership with the National Cemetery Administration’s Veterans Legacy Program, we are pleased to offer free in-person professional development sessions in the spring of 2022. These sessions will explore America’s Unseen Soldiers and how to effectively bring these untold histories back to the classroom. Each workshop will include

• A lecture by an eminent historian 
• A pedagogical session led by a Gilder Lehrman Master Teacher
• A visit to a historic national cemetery
• Free classroom materials, including a special lesson plan made for this series
• A Certificate of Attendance and (when applicable) CTLE letter
• Access to a free professional development video module, The Soldier’s Experience, to be released in May 2022

If you have any questions, please email education@gilderlehrman.org.

Sessions and Partner Cemeteries

March 12, 2022 at Loudon Park National Cemetery in Baltimore, MD

March 26, 2022 at Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside, CA (Register here.)

April 23, 2022 at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Chicago, IL (Register here.)

Upcoming Virtual Programing

Registration information for two additional virtual workshops will be available in May 2022. The topics of these sessions are Women Soldiers in American Military History and Indigenous Soldiers in American Military History.

In a post-program survey at our first workshop with the Veterans Legacy Program, 100% of teachers in attendance agreed that the workshop introduced them to new materials that they could use in instruction.

Learn more about the Veterans Legacy Program, including past sessions, here.

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Opportunities for Students

Affiliate School History Scholarships

The Gilder Lehrman Institute has partnered with the following eight colleges and universities across the country to offer scholarships of $5,000 or more each year for up to four years exclusively for Affiliate School students in Fall 2022:

• Albion College (Albion, MI)
• Berry College (Mt. Berry, GA)
• Georgian Court University (Lakewood, NJ)
• Gettysburg College (Gettysburg, PA)
• Marist College (Poughkeepsie, NY)
• Our Lady of the Lake University (San Antonio, TX)
• Springfield College (Springfield, MA)
• Widener University (Chester, PA)

Click below for those schools whose application deadlines have not yet past:

• Georgian Court University (Lakewood, NJ)
• Our Lady of the Lake University (San Antonio, TX)
• Springfield College (Springfield, MA)
• Widener University (Chester, PA)

Please email affiliate@gilderlehrman.org with questions.

Ham4Progress

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History is proud to partner with Hamilton on the Ham4Progress Award for Educational Advancement. The award supports college-bound high school juniors from communities that directly experience the consequences of social injustice and/or discrimination. This award will provide up to ten students $3,500 each for educational purposes in 2022. The $3,500 award must be used toward educational purposes, which may include

• Test preparation courses
• Tutoring
• College visits
• Technology, including laptops, tablets, or other electronic devices used for learning

For eligibility and application information, click here. Submission deadline is June 15, 2022.

Working with the Gilder Lehrman Collection

The Institute offers two exciting opportunities for students to work directly with the primary source documents in the Gilder Lehrman Collection on a casual basis and on their own schedules.

Tag It!

The Gilder Lehrman Institute invites you to help us tag Founding Era publications in the Gilder Lehrman Collection. We have selected newspapers, pamphlets, broadsides, magazines, and journals dated between 1770 and 1807. They are sources of unique information about the Founding Era that we cannot find elsewhere.

Tagging is a great way to get involved with making primary sources more accessible and inclusive. Through tags, you can identify people, events, terms, and topics in articles, news items, announcements, advertisements, and literary works, bring to light unknown stories, and help researchers find those stories.

Visit the selected collections listed here to get started.

If you have any questions, please contact us at digitalvolunteers@gilderlehrman.org.

Transcribe!

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History Digital Volunteer Transcription Project creates typed transcripts of documents in the Gilder Lehrman Collection to make primary sources more accessible for students, teachers, and researchers. This volunteer opportunity is available to students who are at least thirteen years old.

Students have already transcribed hundreds of primary source documents on projects ranging from Black Lives in the Founding Era to the Alaskan Gold Rush to World War II Letters, all under the guidance of curators at the Gilder Lehrman Institute.

Click here to start transcribing today!

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Recent Events:

The 23rd Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize Ceremony

On Thursday, February 17, 2022, one of the most coveted awards for the study of slavery and abolition, the $25,000 Frederick Douglass Book Prize, sponsored jointly by the Gilder Lehrman Institute and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at the MacMillan Center at Yale University, was presented to two winners:

• Vincent Brown for Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War
• Marjoleine Kars for Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast

The virtual ceremony also honored the third finalist for this year’s prize, Jessica Marie Johnson for Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World.

Read more about the authors and their books here.

“Witnessing History: The Pardon of Homer Plessy” with Annette Gordon-Reed and Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards

The Gilder Lehrman Institute and the Office of Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards held a special panel discussion highlighting the pardon of Mr. Homer A. Plessy (the first posthumous pardon in Louisiana state history) and the history of the Plessy v. Ferguson case on March 16. Panelists included

• John Bel Edwards, 56th Governor of Louisiana
• Annette Gordon-Reed, historian and Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University
• Keith Plessy, descendant of Homer Plessy and President of the Plessy & Ferguson Foundation
• Phoebe Ferguson, descendant of Judge John Howard Ferguson and Executive Director of the Plessy & Ferguson Foundation

Learn more about the original 1896 Supreme Court ruling and read a statement from Governor Edwards about his January 5, 2022, pardon and its significance here.

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Upcoming Events: The Lincoln Prize Ceremony and the Gilder Lehrman Institute Gala

The Lincoln Prize Ceremony

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Gettysburg College announced in February that Caroline E. Janney, author of Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army after Appomattox (The University of North Carolina Press), is the recipient of the 2022 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize.

Caroline E. Janney is the John L. Nau III Professor of the American Civil War and director of the John L. Nau Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia. A graduate of the University of Virginia, she worked as a historian for the National Park Service and taught at Purdue University before returning to UVA in 2018. An active public lecturer, she has given presentations at locations across the globe. Janney is the past president of the Society of Civil War Historians and a series editor for the University of North Carolina Press’s Civil War America series. She has published seven books, including Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation (2013) and Buying and Selling Civil War Memory in Gilded Age America (2021).

She will be recognized during an award ceremony to be held at the Harvard Club in New York City on April 14. The award includes a $50,000 prize and a bronze replica of Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s life-sized bust, Lincoln the Man.

To learn more about this year’s Lincoln Prize and the winning book, click here.

Please write to events@gilderlehrman.org for information on attending the ceremony.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute Gala 

Our Annual Gala takes place in person this year at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on May 18.

To learn more see our Programs and Events page.

Please write to events@gilderlehrman.org for more information.

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Celebrating the Partnership of the Council of Independent Colleges and the Gilder Lehrman Institute

Since 2002, Gilder Lehrman has offered seminars for teachers and college faculty members in partnership with the Council of Independent Colleges, lately with the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Over the years, leading historians such as Joyce Appleby, Thomas Bender, Henry Binford, David Blight, Robert Dallek, David Brion Davis, James Oliver Horton, Ernest May, Carl Smith, and Richard White have led seminars. Participants enjoy working with a leading historian and colleagues on curriculum design and teaching.

Most recently, in 2021, Professor Gary W. Gallagher, John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War Emeritus at the University of Virginia, led The American Civil War: Origins and Consequences in Charlottesville, Virginia.

For a complete list of past Teacher Seminar collaborations between the Gilder Lehrman Institute and the Council of Independent College over the last twenty years, click here.

More than 500 faculty members from mostly small and medium-sized colleges and universities that make up CIC’s membership have benefited from participation in our seminars over the years. Scholars who have attended GLI/CIC seminars and have gone on to work with the Gilder Lehrman Institute as lead scholars include Charles McKinney, Kenya Davis-Hayes, and Benjamin Montoya. Barton Myers became a GLI fellow following his participation in a GLI/CIC seminar.

The Council of Independent Colleges’ former president, Richard Ekman, who serves on the Gilder Lehrman Institute’s President’s Council, facilitated these collaborations and led the development of history scholarships with member colleges and the Institute. Learn more about the Gilder Lehrman Affiliate School History Scholarships here.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute looks forward to many more years and many more seminars with the Council of Independent Colleges.