MA students can choose from a wide variety of courses each semester. Browse courses below to watch lecture previews, meet your professors, and see course details.
Upcoming Fall Semester Deadlines
Image: Photograph of Illinois Soldiers College, Fulton, Illinois, 1866 (The Gilder Lehrman Institute, GLC05111.01.0010)
$750 per Course
8 Courses in Fall 2024
This course provides the unique opportunity to engage with the life, times, and memory of George Washington. Known in his own life as America’s father, Washington has long been identified as the country’s indispensable founder by scholars. We will examine Washington’s record in totality, as a soldier, politician, entrepreneur, enslaver, consumer, president, private/family man, national icon, and more.
African American History to Emancipation recounts the story of Blacks in America from their beginnings in Africa, through centuries of enslavement in the United States, and during the Civil War years’ promise of freedom. We will span centuries filled with momentous events, heroic voices, social movements, as well as cultural beliefs and creative forms expressive of everyday life—all of which contributed to and transformed along the way the larger American nation.
This course will examine the world Dwight Eisenhower helped shape and what role he played shaping it. Eisenhower’s career as a soldier, educator, and statesman will be examined, with primary attention on his popular and consequential presidency. Exploring how Ike responded to challenges and how his actions as president reflected his sensitivity to moral issues as well as the practical demands of politics, managing domestic affairs, and national security is a central concern of this course.
Barely had the guns been silenced at Appomattox when the fighting over the causes of the Civil War began. Some scholars—known as “revisionists”—said that slavery had nothing to do with the war. Others—the “fundamentalists”—insisted that it was a war about slavery. Today, historians pretty much agree that slavery was the cause of the Civil War. But what does that mean? How did slavery cause the Civil War? That’s the question this course sets out to answer.
Widely considered a wellspring for US greatness, immigration has also been an abiding site of our deepest conflicts. The republican foundations of the United States with its promises of democracy and equality for all seem to strain against high numbers of immigrants from parts of the world barely conceived of by the Founding Fathers, much less as sources of new citizens. What is the breaking point for the assimilating powers of US democracy, and how much does national vitality rely upon continued influxes of a diversity of immigrants with their strenuous ambitions and resourcefulness?
Taking a social and cultural historical approach, this course is about Native peoples in modern America since the turn of the twentieth century. It begins with the idea of the Vanishing Race, Geronimo’s final surrender, the Ghost Dance, and Wounded Knee in 1890. Indian children attended boarding schools during times of stressful change is analyzed with the Dawes land allotment, FDR’s Indian New Deal, and 45,000 Indians entering World War II. In the wake of Eisenhowerism, the government’s trust termination and relocation policies led to two-thirds of Native peoples moving to cities.
Students will read and discuss historical interpretations of the American past as they have changed over time.
The course is the capstone seminar for students completing their MA in American History and its sole focus is the production of either a substantial original research paper or a capstone project of comparable significance as determined by the MA program director and faculty.
Enrolled students can register for courses on Campus Experience on the Gettysburg website. If you need assistance navigating the course registration platform, please follow these instructions available as a pdf.