Reading the U.S. Constitution

with Jill Lepore
Online
Thursday, April 8, 2021 • Friday, April 9, 2021 • Thursday, April 15, 2021
4 p.m. – 5:15 p.m.
Apply or nominate a worthy colleague here.

Teaching our constitution during a time of constitutional crisis can be baffling. In this master class, Lepore will illustrate ways to use both art and argument to engage students in undertaking both a close reading of the Constitution, as an eighteenth-century artifact, and a wider analysis of the culture of constitutionalism in American politics.

This is a three-session master class. In the first two sessions, teachers learn from the master. In the third, participants have a rare and valuable opportunity to exchange ideas with other brilliant teachers. Participants are assigned a small amount of homework to prepare for each session.

Jill Lepore teaches at Harvard, is a staff writer at The New Yorker,and is the host of the podcast The Last Archive. Her books include These Truths: A History of the United States,an international bestseller, and most recently IF THEN: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future. A prize-winning professor, she teaches classes in evidence, historical methods, the humanities, and American political history. (On teaching the writing of history, see How to Write a Paper for This Class.)