[We have the following announcement from our friends at the Institute for Constitutional History. Note the application deadline of May 1, 2018.]
Interdisciplinary Summer Workshop in Constitutional History: The Constitutional History of Anglo-American Empire, July 8-13, 2018, Stanford, California. Sponsored by the Institute for Constitutional History with the Stanford Constitutional Law Center.
Description. Building on the literatures on constitutional development in the British Empire, the constitutional origins of the American Revolution, and settler constitutionalism, the seminar will focus on colonization and territorial expansion, the law of slavery, and geopolitics from first settlement to the era of “Manifest Destiny.”
Workshop Leaders: Annette Gordon-Reed is the Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard Law School, a professor of history in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, and formerly the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History at the Queen’s College, University of Oxford (2014-2015). Gordon-Reed won the Pulitzer Prize in History in 2009 for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (W.W. Norton, 2009), a subject she had previously written about in Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (University Press of Virginia, 1997). She is also the author of Andrew Johnson (Times Books/Henry Holt, 2010). Her most recently published book (with Peter S. Onuf) is “Most Blessed of the Patriarchs”: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination (Liveright Publishing, 2016). Her honors include a fellowship from the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, a Guggenheim Fellowship in the humanities, a MacArthur Fellowship, the National Humanities Medal, the National Book Award, and the Woman of Power & Influence Award from the National Organization for Women in New York City. Gordon-Reed was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011 and is a member of the Academy’s Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Peter S. Onuf, Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor Emeritus in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia, Senior Research Fellow at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies (Monticello), and Mellon Distinguished Scholar in Residence, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts, 2017-2018. Onuf’s work on Thomas Jefferson’s political thought, culminating in Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood (University Press of Virginia, 2000) and The Mind of Thomas Jefferson (2007, also Virginia), grows out of earlier studies on the history of American federalism, foreign policy, and political economy. He and co-author Annette Gordon-Reed recently published Most Blessed of Patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination (Liveright, 2016); his Jefferson and the Virginians: Democracy, Constitutions, and Empire is forthcoming (from Louisiana State University Press).
Stipends and Support: Participants will receive accommodation at the Munger Graduate Residence on the campus of Stanford Law School and a modest stipend for meals. Participants will also receive a travel reimbursement up to $250. Workshop participants are expected to attend all sessions and engage in all program activities.
Eligibility and Application Procedure: The summer workshop is designed for university instructors who now teach or plan to teach courses in constitutional studies, including constitutional history, constitutional law, and related subjects. Instructors who would like to devote a unit of a survey course to constitutional history are also welcome to apply. All university-level instructors are encouraged to apply, including adjuncts and part-time faculty members, and post-doctoral fellows from any academic discipline associated with constitutional studies (history, political science, law, anthropology, sociology, literary criticism, etc.).
To apply, please submit the following materials: a detailed résumé or curriculum vitae with contact information; syllabi from any undergraduate course(s) in constitutional studies you currently teach; a 500- word statement describing your interest in both constitutional studies and this workshop; and a letter of recommendation from your department chair or other professional reference (sent separately by e-mail or post). The application statement should address your professional background, any special perspectives or experiences you might bring to the workshop, and how the workshop will enhance your teaching in constitutional studies.
The deadline for applications is May 1, 2018. Applications should be sent via electronic mail to
MMarcus@nyhistory.org. Successful applicants will be notified soon thereafter. For further information, please contact:
Maeva Marcus
Director, Institute for Constitutional History
New-York Historical Society and
The George Washington University Law School
(202) 994-6562
MMarcus@nyhistory.org
Sponsors after the jump.
About ICH
The Institute for Constitutional History (ICH) is the nation’s premier institute dedicated to ensuring that future generations of Americans understand the substance and historical development of the U.S. Constitution. Located at the New York Historical Society and the George Washington University Law School, the Institute is co-sponsored by the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the American Political
Science Association. The Association of American Law Schools is a cooperating entity. ICH prepares junior scholars and college instructors to convey to their readers and students the important role the Constitution has played in shaping American society. ICH also provides a national forum for the preparation and dissemination of humanistic, interdisciplinary scholarship on American constitutional history.
About the Stanford Constitutional Law Center:
The Stanford Constitutional Law Center grows out of the long and distinguished tradition of constitutional law scholarship at Stanford Law School. It carries on this tradition through a program of conferences, lectures, informal “Constitutional Conversations,” and fellowships. The Center has no politics and takes no sides on controversial cases—but it is committed to the rule of law and the idea that the Constitution can be studied and interpreted objectively in light of its text, history, and purposes. It advances this mission through events and activities that foster scholarship, generate public discussion, and provide opportunities for students and scholars to engage in analysis of the Constitution across the ideological spectrum.
The Graduate Institute for Constitutional History is supported, in part, by the Saunders Endowment for Constitutional History and a “We the People” challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and by the Stanford Constitutional Law Center.a
