Led by: Prof. Caroline Winterer (Stanford University)
Course Number: AMHI 619
Semesters: Fall 2023, Fall 2020
Image: Mezzotint by Edward Savage based on David Martin's late 18th-century portrait of Benjamin Franklin, ca.1800 (Gilder Lehrman Institute, GLC04952)
The Enlightenment is often associated with Europe, but in this course, we will explore how the specific conditions of eighteenth-century North America—slavery, the presence of large numbers of Indigenous peoples, a colonial political context, and even local animals, rocks, and plants—also shaped the major questions and conversations of the time. We will examine how Enlightenment ideas directly influenced the American Revolution’s commitment to liberty, natural rights, separation of powers, and the pursuit of happiness—and how those ideas crept into almost every other area of American life as well.
Lecture 1: “What Is the ‘Enlightenment’ and What Is ‘American’ about It?”
Caroline Winterer, William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies, Stanford University
Caroline Winterer is William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies and professor by courtesy of classics. She specializes in American history before 1900, especially the history of ideas, political thought, material culture, and the history of science. She is currently writing a book on the history of deep time in America, to be published by Princeton University Press. She teaches courses on American history through 1900, including American cultural and intellectual history, the American Enlightenment, the history of science, and the trans-Atlantic contexts of American thought.