Department Homepage
This academic year, the university is celebrating and examining 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, forming the foundation of the United States of America. Through events, exhibits, classes and public engagement, our faculty and students are looking at the founding of this country from a variety of perspectives. Join us as we explore 250 years of democracy.
Location: Cornell Law School , L28, Zhu Room
Location: Goldwin Smith Hall, 132
Location: Klarman Hall, Atrium
Location: Olin Hall, 155
Location: Rhodes + Rawlings Auditorium, Klarman Hall, KG70
Location: Klarman Hall, Atrium
Location: Rhodes + Rawlings Auditorium, Klarman Hall, KG70
Michael T. Sillerman '68 Rotunda, Rare and Manuscript Collections
Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections commemorates the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence (1776–2026) with an exhibition of rare books, letters, and documents on the life of George Washington.
Martha Van Rensselaer Hall, The Gold Gallery
This exhibition asks what happens when that story confronts its own contradictions: when American myths are pressed up against the labor, land, histories, and people that make them wearable in the first place. Visitors move through the exhibition the way a newcomer might, from idyllic first impressions toward a more complicated understanding of America.
Peter John Loewen and Davide Napoli
Disagreement is central to universities, democracies, and the founding of the United States. Scholars debate everything from cosmology to government; societies wrestle with questions about wealth, rights, speech, religion, and federal power. This course teaches students to engage disagreement constructively by examining disputes from America’s founding. Students will attend live campus conversations with leading academics and public intellectuals, participate in faculty-led seminars that explore differing disciplinary perspectives, and complete a paired assignment to collaboratively work through a real disagreement. These activities develop skills for reasoned, productive civic and scholarly engagement.
John Parmenter
As we reflect on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, this course examines the origins, character, and outcomes of the American Revolution and the ways its memory shapes contemporary life. Why do popular remembrances often obscure the Revolution’s violence and divisions? Topics include the rise of colonial opposition to Britain, the Revolutionary Wars, and the republican experiment after the 1783 Treaty of Paris. Emphasizing student interpretation, the course analyzes diverse experiences—women and men, everyday people and leaders, Native Americans, African Americans, and Loyalists—to illuminate how the Revolution was lived, contested, and remembered.
Casey Schmitt
On the eve of the American Revolution Britain governed 26 colonies, not just the 13 that became the United States. This course shifts early American history from a US-centered narrative to a global perspective—1490s through the 1800s—showing how Caribbean trade, the African slave trade, and transatlantic connections shaped New England’s growth and colonial life. It examines how citizenship was used to exclude diverse inhabitants—European, Indigenous, and African—and centers often-marginalized voices, from enslaved African mariners to Spanish American nuns. These perspectives illuminate cultural encounters, labor exploitation, revolutionary upheaval, and state formation across British North America and beyond.
