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Additional Resources

Summer 2006 Schedule

Session 1: June 18 to June 23 | Session 2: June 25 to June 30
Session 3: July 23 to July 28 | Session 4: July 30 to August 4

 Session One: Sunday, June 18, 2006 to Friday, June 23, 2006
 AHG 503: Sectionalism and Civil War
(PDF Syllabus)
This course will examine how the regional existence of slavery widened the social and political divide in America and eventually led to a civil war. It will consider the debate over slavery's expansion, popular sovereignty, abolitionism, colonization, secession, and the limits of presidential authority. It will focus on the political thought and practice of Abraham Lincoln as he struggled to preserve the union of the American states from the threat of slavery's expansion and, ultimately, a civil war. To place Lincoln's words and deeds in historical context, the course will also consider the writings of important figures like U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas and abolitionist orator/journalist Frederick Douglass.
Instructors:
  Lucas E. Morel (Washington and Lee University)
  Thomas L. Krannawitter (Hillsdale College)
 AHG 505: The Progressive Era
(PDF Syllabus)
American government underwent major changes in the twentieth century as a result of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. These changes, in many ways, continue to define American politics and society today. But the political principles that drove the New Deal and the Great Society did not originate with FDR or Johnson; they were introduced into America by the Progressives of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. This course will examine the political principles of the Progressive movement in America and will address both the historical developments that gave rise to Progressivism and the consequences of the Progressive movement for the course of American history. It will also seek to understand the way in which Progressivism has influenced not only American domestic policy, but foreign policy as well.
Instructors:
  Ronald J. Pestritto (University of Dallas)
  William J. Atto (University of Dallas)
 AHG 510: Great American Texts
(PDF Syllabus)
Thomas Jefferson called it the "best commentary on the principles of government, which ever was written." It is certainly the definitive interpretation and defense of the Constitution of the United States. The Federalist is a complex political work comprised of arguments about war, economics, national unity, and liberty (among other things) based on appeals to history, human nature, reason, and prudence. In this course, we will examine The Federalist as fully and as deeply as we can, aiming to understand how (or whether) its parts fit together in a coherent whole and its enduring contribution to our understanding of politics.
Instructor:
  David Foster (Ashland University)
 AHG 622: Religion in American History and Politics
(PDF Syllabus)
This course examines religion in American history and politics from the Revolution to the present. Its central concern is to understand how religion and politics have shaped each other and together shaped our history. Topics studied include religion and politics in the Revolution and Founding, religion and the coming and meaning of the Civil War, revivalism, fundamentalism, religion and the Constitution and religion and modern American politics. Texts will include sermons and other primary sources, as well as selected interpretive essays, including selections from Tocqueville's Democracy in America.
Instructors:
  David Tucker (U.S. Naval Postgraduate School)
  Paul O. Carrese (U.S. Air Force Academy)

 Session Two: Sunday, June 25, 2006 to Friday, June 30, 2006
 AHG 502: The American Founding
(PDF Syllabus)
This course is an intensive study of the Constitutional Convention which took place in Independence Hall in Philadelphia between May 25 and September 17, 1787, the months-long struggle following the Convention over ratification of the Constitution, and the creation of the Bill of Rights in the First Congress under the new Constitution. The main texts for the course will be James Madison's Notes of the Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, The Federalist Papers, selected anti-Federalist writings, and the Constitution itself.
Instructors:
  Christopher Flannery (Azusa Pacific University)
  Gordon Lloyd (Pepperdine University)
 AHG 621: Race and Equality in America
(PDF Syllabus)
Specific documents, issues, and controversies to be considered include the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, reconstruction, black codes, Jim Crow laws, and segregation. Students will also review laws, constitutional amendments, court cases, and social criticism addressing civil and political rights in America. Students will also read a history of the fight for equal rights in America and related scholarly commentary and fiction. Contemporary issues to be considered may include affirmative action, black reparations, racial profiling, and the "achievement gap" in education.
Instructors:
  Lucas E. Morel (Washington and Lee University)
  Diana J. Schaub (Loyola University in Maryland)
 AHG 633: American Presidency II
(PDF Syllabus)
This course is an examination of the political and constitutional development of the office of president from Reconstruction to the present. It looks first at the dramatic decline of the authority and prestige of the presidency in the late 19th Century and resurgence of the Presidency during the Progressive period at which time the two themes that come to dominate the modern presidency first come to the fore: the president as domestic steward and the president as leader of a great power. It then examines FDR as the seminal figure in the actual establishment of the modern presidency. The course will then examine all the post-FDR presidents with special attention to LBJ and Reagan. It will conclude with a look at the contemporary presidency and the particular challenge posed for it by the War on Terror.
Instructors:
  Marc K. Landy (Boston College)
  Jeremy D. Bailey (Duquesne University)

 Session Three: Sunday, July 23, 2006 to Friday, July 28, 2006
 AHG 501: The American Revolution
(PDF Syllabus)
This course focuses on three topics: political developments in North America and the British empire and the arguments for and against independence, culminating in the Declaration of Independence; the Revolutionary War as a military, social and cultural event in the development of the American nation and state; and the United States under the Articles of Confederation. In the course of our discussions, we will explore the meaning, implications, and political logic of some of the central ideas of the American Revolution: equality, liberty, government by consent, representation, the rule of law, separation of powers, limited government, natural rights, civil rights, republicanism, federalism, and constitutionalism.
Instructors:
  Christopher Flannery (Azusa Pacific University)
  David Tucker (U.S. Naval Postgraduate School)
 AHG 607: America during the Cold War
(PDF Syllabus)
The simmering conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union from 1945 to 1989 was the defining phenomenon of the age, affecting not only the country's foreign policy but its politics, society, economy, and culture as well. In this course, students will examine the most important events, ideas, and personalities of the 44 years from the end of World War II to the end of the Reagan administration. We will address key historical debates on topics including the origins of the Cold War; the development of atomic and nuclear weapons; McCarthyism; the expansion of the Cold War beyond Europe; race relations; the growth of the "imperial presidency," human rights, neoconservatism, and the end of the Cold War. The course will also give detailed attention to Cold War crisesincluding the Korean War, the Taiwan Strait, Berlin, Cuba, and Vietnamand their impact on American domestic society. Lectures and discussions will focus on a mix of primary documents and influential interpretative texts.
Instructors:
  Jeremi A. Suri (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
  Alonzo Hamby (Ohio University)
 AHG 611: The American Way of War
(PDF Syllabus)
What special problems does warfare pose for a democratic republic like the United States? How can politics interfere with the development of military strategy, and vice versa? On balance, have America's constitutional traditions been more of a help or a hindrance to the country's ability to wage war? This seminar will focus on four of the largest conflicts in U.S. historythe War for Independence, the Civil War, and World Wars I and IIin an attempt to answer these questions.
Instructors:
  John Moser (Ashland University)
  Stephen Knott (University of Virginia)

 Session Four: Sunday, July 30, 2006 to Friday, August 4, 2006
 AHG 504: Civil War and Reconstruction
(PDF Syllabus)
This course explores the policy and strategy of the American Civil War and the politics of Reconstruction. We will examine the causes and consequences of the war; the goals and policies of the respective governments; political, economic and strategic factors affecting both sides, domestic politics in both the North and the South; the fate of civil liberties during the war; Union and Confederate diplomacy; the respective strategies of the Union and Confederacy; leadership, civil-military relations, and the "politics of command;" emancipation as a political-military strategy; the role of black soldiers; and the operational art of the war. To this end, we will analyze a number of campaigns, paying special attention to such factors as: 1) the strategic objectives of the campaign; 2) the plan and its implementation; 3) operational factors including movements, combats, deception, intelligence, and logistics; and 4) command relations. We will also examine in some detail the period of Reconstruction that followed the war. We will trace the debate between Lincoln and the Radical Republicans while the war was still raging, and follow its evolution from presidential Reconstruction (Lincoln and Johnson) to Radical Reconstruction and its consequences for the Grant administration, the "reconstructed" states, and the civil rights of the freedmen.
Instructors:
  Mackubin T. Owens (U.S. Naval War College)
  Jean Edward Smith (Marshall University)
 AHG 601: Sources of the American Regime
(PDF Syllabus)
What kind of a country is America? Some say it is a Biblical nation whose founding principles come from divine revelation. Others claim it is a secular society rooted in Enlightenment rationalism. Who's right? Or is it somehow both? The answer lies, of course, in how America's Founders understood their own principles. But those Founders, by their own admission, drew on previous sources even as they created a "new order of the ages." Among the most prominent sources shaping the regime at the time of the Founding were the Bible and the political thought of John Locke. To know if our Founding principles were Lockean or Biblical, we need to understand something of the political teaching of the Bible and John Locke. We will do that by studying selections from the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, as well as Locke's view of politics and Biblical religion in "A Letter Concerning Toleration," and his larger political principles outlined in the famous Second Treatise of Government.
Instructor:
  Jeffrey Sikkenga (Ashland University)
 AHG 630: American Statesmen
(PDF Syllabus)
Even though the powers of the American Executive are controlled and limited, extraordinary acts of statesmanship are possible. This seminar examines those presidents who may be called statesmen and the political circumstances in which their prudence revealed itself. We should not be surprised that these statesmen will also have demonstrated some measure of their greatness by the way they led and instructed and inspired the people. Among those examined will be George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan.
Instructors:
  Peter W. Schramm (Ashland University)
  Steven F. Hayward (American Enterprise Institute)


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Ashland, OH 44805
(419) 289-4142    (800) 882-1548

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