First Year Seminar: America's Founding Documents

This first-year seminar introduces students to the foundations of U.S. democracy through its most significant speeches, declarations, letters, proclamations, and other writings. We will identify and analyze the political, historical, and cultural impact of founding documents on governance and democracy in America, identify and analyze the political, historical, and cultural impact of key milestones in American history on the evolution of democratic republicanism, evaluate key concepts, principles, arguments and contexts in founding documents of the American republic, and evaluate key milestones in progress and challenges in the effort to form ''a more perfect Union.''