This week-long professional development seminar immerses teachers in the transformative “Age of Revolution,” tracing political upheavals from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries. Participants will explore the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Revolutions of 1830, the Revolutions of 1848, and the Russian Revolution of 1917, comparing their causes, trajectories, and outcomes.
Through primary sources, scholarly analysis, and collaborative inquiry, educators will examine how each movement responded to crises of governance, inequality, and identity, while also considering the broader global context. The seminar will highlight the democratic ideals and structural reforms introduced by the American and French Revolutions, the wave of liberal nationalism that characterized the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848, and the radical social transformation pursued by the Bolsheviks in 1917.
Durability will serve as a central theme of the seminar, as teachers examine why some revolutions quickly unraveled or produced short-lived outcomes, while others laid the foundation for enduring systems. The French Revolution’s turbulence gave way to empire and monarchy; the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 achieved limited or short-lived reform; and the Russian Revolution instituted sweeping but ultimately unsustainable authoritarian structures. In contrast, the American Revolution produced a constitutional framework that has persisted for more than two centuries, balancing adaptability with stability.
By the end of the week, participants will leave with deeper historical insight and classroom-ready strategies to help students grasp both the common patterns and unique legacies of revolutionary change.
Please note: For the field study day, participants should be prepared to walk significant distances, including up to one mile at a time, as part of the program. Some historic sites and other locations included in the itinerary may not be fully ADA compliant due to the age of the buildings and may lack elevators or other accessibility features.
Speaker:
Dr. Allen C. Guelzo
Dr. Allen C. Guelzo is a Professor of Humanities at the Hamilton School. He was the Thomas W. Smith Distinguished Research Scholar in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, where he also directed the Madison Program’s Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship.He is the author of Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, which won the Lincoln Prize for 2000, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America, which won the Lincoln Prize for 2005, and Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America, which won the Abraham Lincoln Institute Prize for 2008. His book on the battle of Gettysburg, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion was a New York Times best seller in 2013, which won a third Lincoln Prize, the inaugural Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History, the Fletcher Pratt Award of the Civil War Round Table of New York City, and the Richard B. Harwell Prize of the Atlanta Civil War Round Table. His articles and essays have appeared in scholarly journals, and also in The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The National Interest, The Weekly Standard, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, and he has been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, with Steve Inskeep, on Morning Joe, on the Discovery Channel, the National Geographic Channel, Brian Lamb’s BookNotes, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. From 2006 to 2012, he was a member of the National Council on the Humanities. He has been a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies (1991-2), the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania (1992-3), and the Charles Warren Center for American Studies at Harvard University (1994-5). Together with Patrick Allitt and Gary W. Gallagher, he team-taught The Teaching Company’s American History series, and has completed other five series for The Teaching Company: Mister Lincoln, on the life of Abraham Lincoln, The American Mind (on American intellectual history), The American Revolution, Making History: How Great Historians Interpret the Past, and in 2017, America’s Founding Fathers. Among his most recent books are Reconstruction: A Concise History (Oxford University Press, 2019) and Robert E. Lee: A Life (Knopf, 2021) which was named by the Wall Street Journal as one of Ten Best Books for 2021. His newest books are Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy and the American Experiment (Knopf, 2024), which won the Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Prize and was a finalist for a fourth Lincoln Prize, and Voices from Gettysburg: Letters, Papers, and Memoirs from the Greatest Battle of the Civil War (Kensington Press, 2024). His website is www.allenguelzo.com.
Lee Trepanier
Dr. Lee Trepanier is a political scientist and the Dean of the D’Amour College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Previously, he served as Chair of the Political Science Department at Samford University in Alabama. Trepanier earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from Louisiana State University in 2001. His teaching spans political philosophy, constitutional law, and American politics, with courses on topics like American political thought, democracy, and politics in literature and film. Trepanier’s research focuses on Eric Voegelin, politics and literature, religion and politics, democracy and education, and pedagogical approaches in political science. He has authored, edited, or co-edited over a dozen books, including Political Symbols in Russian History (2007), Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Globalization (2011, co-editor), Dostoevsky’s Political Thought (2013, co-editor), Why the Humanities Matter Today (2017, editor). As editor of Bloomsbury Academic’s Politics, Literature, and Film book series, he has shaped scholarly discourse in these fields. Additionally, he is a Jack Miller Center Founding Civics Initiative Faculty member with whom he has directed civic education programs for high school teachers and students.
Typically scheduled from Sunday through Friday in the summer, Founding Forward’s week-long teacher seminars are hosted at Union League Liberty Hill a 300+ acre private conference center and golf course in suburban Philadelphia. Each seminar has a single theme and consists of content-focused talks by highly regarded scholars (morning and afternoon) interspersed each day with activation sessions featuring either lesson demonstrations from master teachers and presentation from resource providers like Retro Report or Periodic Presidents. Finally, each seminar includes an out-of-classroom field study to historic sites, archives, and museums.
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