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When did the American Revolution begin and end? What were its causes and effects? How did entirely new forms of both freedom and unfreedom come about at exactly the same time? We will investigate these questions and more in this course.
Lead Scholar: Chandra Manning, Georgetown University
Master Teacher: Connie Lopez-Fink
Image Source: Eighteenth-century drawing of a soldier in uniform, ca. 1770–1780 (The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, GLC01450.071)
Up to 21 PD Hours
Did you know that there were actually twenty-six, not thirteen, British colonies in North America in 1776? Half of them broke away and came together in an event we now call the American Revolution . . . but there was nothing inevitable, or even predictable about any part of it! So when did the American Revolution begin and end? What were its causes and effects? How did entirely new forms of both freedom and unfreedom come about at exactly the same time? What was revolutionary about the Revolution? To take on these questions, we will investigate themes of
And we will ask ourselves how do we know what we know about the American Revolution by dedicating one session to a hands-on workshop focusing on different types of primary source evidence ranging from numerical data to eighteenth-century newspapers to archaeological evidence to old maps, paintings, and more.
Optional Book Talk: If you are interested in Professor Manning’s scholarship but want to take a different course at the Teacher Symposium, you may attend her book talk on Troubled Refuge: Struggling for Freedom in the Civil War. Symposium participants who come to these optional book talks can earn additional PD credit.
Benjamin Franklin by David Martin, oil on canvas, 1767 (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts)
Chandra Manning is a professor of history at Georgetown University, where she teaches classes on the Civil War, slavery and emancipation, the American Revolution, and the history of baseball (not necessarily in that order). Her first book, What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War (Knopf, 2007), won the Avery O. Craven Prize awarded by the Organization of American Historians, earned Honorable Mention for the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize and the Virginia Literary Award for Nonfiction, and was a finalist for the Jefferson Davis Prize and the Frederick Douglass Book Prize. Her second book, Troubled Refuge: Struggling for Freedom in the Civil War (Knopf, 2016), won the Jefferson Davis Prize awarded by the American Civil War Museum for best book on the Civil War and was a finalist for the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize. She is also a former National Park Service ranger and continues to work closely with museums and historic sites. Currently, she is researching and writing a book about the US South.
Connie Lopez-Fink teaches fifth grade social studies at University School of Nashville, an independent K–12 school in Tennessee. Prior to teaching, Connie worked in international marketing. Since going back to school to earn a master's degree in education, teaching and learning have been her passion. For the last fifteen years, she has also had the fortune of teaching seventh grade Spanish as well as second and third grade students. At the core of the learning experiences she creates are inquiry-based projects that are embedded with skills that promote a problem-solving mindset and culturally responsive learning. Connie has been recognized as a PBS Learning Media Digital Innovator (2015), Humanities Tennessee Outstanding Educator (2017), and Tennessee History Teacher of the Year (2018). In 2020, she was the master teacher for the National Council for History Education “Creating and Defining a Nation (1619–1789)” Summer Colloquium. Lopez-Fink is currently participating in a Teaching with Primary Sources Civil Rights Fellowship.