Two New Self-Paced Courses: History of Childhood in America and Making Modern America

The Gilder Lehrman Institute is excited to offer two new Self-Paced Courses.

• History of Childhood in America, led by Steven Mintz, University of Texas at Austin
• Making Modern America, led by Margaret O’Mara, University of Washington

History of Childhood in America

This course places contemporary educational, legal, policy, and psychological thinking about childhood and current concerns about children’s well-being into a sweeping historical perspective. It examines childhood both as lived experience—shaped by such factors as class, ethnicity, gender, geographical region, and historical era—and as a cultural category that adults impose upon children. The class will place a special emphasis on public policy, including such topics as adoption, child abuse and neglect, children’s rights, disability, juvenile delinquency, schooling, and social welfare.

Lead scholar Steven Mintz is a leading educational innovator and an award-winning teacher and author. An authority on families, children, youth, and the life course, he has also published extensively on slavery, social reform, ethnicity, and film. For five years, he served as the founding director of the University of Texas System’s Institute for Transformational Learning, which was responsible for designing and testing new educational models and technologies that make quality education more accessible, affordable, and successful. He also served as senior advisor to the president of Hunter College for student success and director of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Teaching Center.

Learn more and register for the course here.

Making Modern America

How has the past century of American history shaped the political and economic landscape of the early twenty-first century? What is the broader context and historical backstory of contemporary political and social movements, business practices, and global flows of people, capital, and ideas? How can we use historical knowledge and the tools of historical analysis to better understand and address present-day challenges? With these questions in mind, this course explores key moments and people in the history of the United States from the end of World War I to the present.

Lead scholar Margaret O’Mara is the Howard & Frances Keller Endowed Professor of History at the University of Washington. She writes and teaches about the growth of the high-tech economy, the history of US politics, and the connections between the two. O’Mara is the author of Cities of Knowledge (Princeton, 2005), Pivotal Tuesdays (Penn Press, 2015), and The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America (Penguin Press, 2019). She is a frequent contributor to the Opinion page of the New York Times. Her writing also has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Bloomberg Businessweek, Foreign Policy, the American Prospect, and Pacific Standard.

Learn more and register for the course here.

BOTH COURSES OFFER THE FOLLOWING CONTENT:

• Twelve lectures
• Primary source readings to complement the lectures
• A certificate of completion for 15 hours of professional development credit

If you have questions about these or any other Self-Paced Courses, please view our FAQs page or email selfpacedcourses@gilderlehrman.org.