Led by: Prof. Eric Slauter (University of Chicago)
Course Number: AMHI 620
Semesters: Summer 2025, Fall 2022
Image: William J. Stone facsimile of the Declaration of Independence, 1823. (The Gilder Lehrman Institute, GLC00154.02)
The Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence
Course Description
This course investigates the origins, meanings, and contested legacies of one of the most consequential political documents in world history. 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, nearly 250 years later? Lectures and primary and secondary readings provide a series of philosophical, political, economic, social, cultural, religious, and legal perspectives on the document’s sources, meanings, and legacies.
Please note that the required books listed under course readings are finalized but other aspects of the course syllabus are subject to change.
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About the Scholar
Eric Slauter, Deputy Dean of the Humanities Division and the College, University of Chicago
Eric Slauter is deputy dean of the Humanities and the College at the University of Chicago, where he is an associate professor in the Department of English and an associate faculty member in the Divinity School and serves as the founding director of the Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture. A specialist in early American cultural, intellectual, legal, and political history, Slauter is an elected member of the American Antiquarian Society and an elected fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society. He has chaired the faculty board of the University of Chicago Press and served for a year as visiting editor at the William and Mary Quarterly.
The views expressed in the course descriptions and lectures are those of the lead scholars.