This History U course investigates the origins, meanings, and contested legacies of one of the most consequential political documents in world history.
Course Instructor: Professor Eric Slauter, University of Chicago
Eligibility: High school students
Image Source: John Trumbull, The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776, 1823 (Yale University Art Gallery 1832.3)
History U
Free for high school students
What does the Declaration of Independence declare? What did the Declaration’s language of equality, liberty, and rights mean to its authors and earliest readers? How and why have understandings of the document changed over time? And what place do the words and ideals of the Declaration hold now, 250 years later? This History U course will begin with an examination of the sources, drafting, circulation, and reception of the text in the age of the American Revolution. Once we’ve immersed ourselves in the early history of the document we’ll trace some of the key turning points in the afterlife of the document, including the deployment of the Declaration in arguments about the rights of enslaved peoples and women in antebellum America; the changing meaning of the Declaration in the era of the Civil War; the place and promise of the Declaration in contests over human rights and civil rights in the twentieth century; and the significance of the document in our own time.
The views expressed in this course are those of Dr. Eric Slauter.
CherylAnne Amendola explains what you will learn in this course.
Eric Slauter, Deputy Dean of the Humanities Division, Master of the Humanities Collegiate Division, and Associate Professor of English, University of Chicago
Professor Eric Slauter, the deputy dean of the Humanities Division and the College, is an associate professor of English at the University of Chicago. The founding director of the Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture, Professor Slauter specializes in early American cultural, intellectual, and literary history, with additional research and teaching interests in a range of fields and methods. He is the author of The State as a Work of Art: The Cultural Origins of the Constitution (2009).
This course examines the “why” and the “how” of American government through in-depth discussion of its history and workings.
This course focuses on the story of the birth and initial growth of the United States of America.
This course discusses the experiences of enslaved people through the use of audio files, diaries, letters, actions, and silences.