Led by Prof. Caroline Winterer (Stanford University)
Course Number: AMHI 653
Semesters: Spring 2026
Image: Ralph Waldo Emerson, [So near is grandeur to our dust . . .], ca. 1860 (The Gilder Lehrman Institute, GLC05508.098.01)
American Intellectual History, Pt. I
American Intellectual History, Pt. I
New Course
Course Description
“I become a transparent eyeball.” If you find people who say things like this appealing, then this is the course for you. Together we’ll travel from around 1630 to around 1860. We’ll investigate some of the most influential ideas to grip America in that era—ideas that inspired, energized, infuriated, delighted, offended, united, and divided people from many walks of life. We’ll look at how Americans thought about God, government, slavery, war, capitalism, socialism, bodies, minds, sex, gender, evolution, truth, imperialism, art, cities, children, utopianism, dinosaurs, and of course, eyeballs. We’ll take these ideas all on their own terms, not judging them by our standards but instead trying to understand why people found them appealing in their own time. The greatest gift of the historian is generosity: trying to understand people in that past, to enter into the hearts and minds of people who walked the earth before us.
Please note that the required books listed under course readings are finalized, but other aspects of the course syllabus are subject to change. We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase made through the Bookshop.org links provided. Thank you for supporting our programs!
Meet Caroline Winterer
Prof. Winterer delivers the 2025 GBC-GLI MA commencement address
About the Scholar
Caroline Winterer, William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies, Stanford University
Caroline Winterer specializes in American history before 1900, especially the history of ideas and the history of science. She is the author of five books. Most recently, How the New World Became Old: The Deep Time Revolution in America (Princeton, 2024) shows how the idea of deep time transformed how Americans see their country and themselves. Earlier books and articles have explored America’s long tradition of looking at the ancient classical world for political, artistic, and cultural inspiration. She received an American Ingenuity Award from the Smithsonian Institution for mapping the social network of Benjamin Franklin. She is currently editing a book with her Stanford colleague Jessica Riskin entitled The Apes & Us: A Century of Thinking About Humans Among the Primates. It brings together leading anthropologists, primatologists, and historians to reflect upon the many ways we’ve explored the human/ape boundary since the Age of Darwin. The book emerges from an exhibit staged at Stanford in 2024.
The views expressed in the course descriptions and lectures are those of the lead scholars.