2021 Winter Newsletter

2021 ends on several high notes for the Gilder Lehrman Institute, which we are pleased to share through our Winter Newsletter.

We just welcomed our 30,000th Affiliate School—Sequoyah High School in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

We have a new student essay contest and new scholarship opportunities for students, as well as new professional development to offer teachers. 

We celebrate all of our 2021 Book Prize winners.

We look to all the history we can share with you in the holiday season with our Gift Shop and Book Shop.

Find all this and more in our 2021 Winter Newsletter, available in full here.

Highlights from the Newsletter include:

HOLIDAY GIFT SHOPPING AT GLI

The Gift Shop

The Gilder Lehrman Gift Shop features favorites from the Gilder Lehrman Collection—a collection spanning 500 years and more than 80,000 documents—for teachers, parents, supporters, and history enthusiasts.

From household items to apparel, historical posters to GLI publications, the Gilder Lehrman Gift Shop offers a wide range of perfect holiday gifts.

The Gilder Lehrman Book Shop

This holiday season, the Gilder Lehrman Institute’s staff recommends their favorite history books, all of which can be purchased from the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop.

We have so far featured twentieth-century American history book picks from Mindy DePalma, Sasha Rolón Pereira, and Jonathan Anderson; playful holiday gift ideas from Cassidy Hooker, Alinda Borell, Peter Shea, and Marissa Cheifetz; and serious deep dives into our shared cultural histories from Daniel Pecoraro and Nathaniel Weisberg, all explaining why they chose their books.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR STUDENTS

Announcing In Their Own Words: A New Student Essay Contest

In Their Own Words is a new essay contest open to high school students at Gilder Lehrman Affiliate Schools.

The contest offers students the opportunity to examine primary sources in the Gilder Lehrman Collection and to demonstrate their skills in historical interpretation and textual analysis.

Affiliate School History Scholarships

The Gilder Lehrman Institute has partnered with several 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!

Nine colleges and universities in seven states have committed to scholarships in Fall 2022.

New Professional Development for Teachers at GLI

The 2021–2022 How Did We Get Here? Series

Professional Development on Topical Issues

The How Did We Get Here? professional development series provides teachers with ready-made, classroom-friendly resources on topics in American history that are front-and-center in current events, such as the Great Migration, US foreign policy from before World War I to now, and the experiences of American Indians, Asian Americans, Latino and Latina Americans, and the LGBTQ community.

New Self-Paced Courses

Gilder Lehrman Self-Paced Courses offer K–12 teachers the opportunity to watch online courses, review supporting primary source documents, and test their knowledge with quizzes for fifteen professional development contact hours. In fall 2021, four new courses were added to the dozens of existing offerings.

BOOK PRIZE WINNERS

Since its founding in 1994, the Gilder Lehrman Institute has supported exemplary scholarship and promoted the public’s engagement with American history through its book prizes. Each recognizes the best book of the year in its field. A jury of leading scholars evaluates the entries and chooses a pool of finalists from which the prize’s board selects the winning book. The winner is honored at an award ceremony providing an opportunity for the public, including teachers and students, to hear the author speak.

We celebrate

• David S. Reynolds, author of Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times, as the recipient of the 2021 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize
• Mary Beth Norton, author of 1774: The Long Year of Revolution, as the recipient of the 2021 George Washington Prize
• Alexander Mikaberidze, author of The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History, as the recipient of the eighth annual Gilder Lehrman Prize for Military History
• Vincent Brown, author of Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War, and Marjoleine Kars, author of Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast, as co-winners of the twenty-third annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize

All the Gilder Lehrman book prize-winning books and staff picks are available at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop. By purchasing any of them, you are helping to support the programming of the Gilder Lehrman Institute. We receive an affiliate commission from every sale and put that money to work to develop high-caliber American history programming.