As part of your AMPU program, you will complete and report on fifteen hours of study in a Gilder Lehrman Online Course. Below, we have listed the self-paced courses that best align with the content you will be covering this year. Please read through each of the descriptions and decide which one you would like to take. The deadline to sign up for the course is October 25, 2019.
You can either take ONE of the full-length courses (Famous Trials, American Presidency) to complete the requirement OR you may take TWO of the partial-length courses to complete the requirement:
Full-Length Courses (only one required to fulfill 15-hour requirement)
Famous Trials in American History: This course examines twelve of the most famous trials of the past century, focusing on the legal significance, historical and political context, social implications, and media coverage surrounding each case. Through a combination of lectures, court testimonies, newspaper articles, and more, participants will consider what role politics, race, gender, religion, and celebrity played in these explosive cases.
The American Presidency: This course takes an in-depth look at the history and powers of the executive office through case studies of six twentieth- and twenty-first-century presidents. Through the examination of these modern presidents, participants will develop an understanding of the evolution of presidential power in relation to other branches of government, and in the country more generally. Course materials include optional selected readings from a number of texts as well as archival audio and video. Lectures are organized in interview format, with two lectures devoted to each president.
OR
Partial-Length Courses (two required to meet 15-hour requirement)
Please note that for these courses, the pedagogy sections are completely optional.
The Global Cold War: For a half century, the Cold War shaped the world. From its obvious consequences in Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam, to its more subtle impact on American culture and daily life, the Cold War was the dominant reality of everyday life.This course will examine the origins, strategy, and consequences of the Cold War from a global perspective. We will look closely at the conflict’s impact not only in the United States and Russia, but also in sometimes unexpected nations across Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia. Participants will read eye-opening primary documents that illustrate the Cold War’s many complexities, twists, and turns, and consider the latest scholarship interpreting what we now know—a generation after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The Kennedy Presidency: More than 50 years after its tragic end, the presidency of John F. Kennedy continues to be the focus of scholars, educators, biographers, journalists, politicians, advertisers, students, and citizens of the nation and the world. Join the Gilder Lehrman Institute and Professor Barbara Perry of the University of Virginia to examine why a mere thousand-day presidency continues to attract such universal attention to this day. Discover the strengths, weaknesses, successes, and failures of the 35th president of the United States. This course examines JFK’s biography, career, rhetoric, and policies, including on the Cold War, the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, the Peace Corps, civil rights, the space race, and the arts, to gain both knowledge of and perspective on the Camelot era.
The Supreme Court and the Constitution in the 20th Century: The Constitution is the founding document of the United States. Yet ever since the process of ratification, the document’s meaning—and questions about who gets to decide its meaning—have spurred pitched political battles, campaigns for elected office and social change, and arguments among ordinary voters from all walks of life. Americans have debated the question of what the Constitution means in courtrooms and legislatures, at lunch counters and on picket lines, outside medical clinics and in schools. Studying the Constitution in the twentieth century means learning about how law, society, politics, and culture all interact. Through examination of nine defining cases and themes, the course explores how regular people, social movement activists and organizations, politicians, scholars, lawyers, and judges have fought about what the Constitution should mean inside and outside of the courtroom.