Before Hamilton: Power and History

This seminar will equip students to wade into and engage with Americans' current fascination with the "founders": the group of American politicians who presided over the new nation. It will do so by digging deeply into American history during the early national period, as well as by giving students opportunities to perform their own research and analysis. It will examine politics, high and low, as well as cultural and intellectual developments. By making these moves, and, crucially, by thinking about how we make them, the course will teeter constantly between its express content and larger lessons about historical methodology and practice.