Courses

In 1776, the Declaration of Independence announced the birth of a new nation and reshaped political imaginations worldwide. As its 250th anniversary approaches, this course—led by Professor Caroline Winterer, chair of Stanford’s Department of History—revisits the Declaration as both a historical event and a living document. We’ll trace the road to independence, exploring the political crises and colonial debates that led to July 4. Then we'll explore the Declaration’s Enlightenment roots, including its most enduring phrase—“life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”—probing what Jefferson and his contemporaries might have meant and how those meanings have been contested and reimagined across generations. We’ll look at the Declaration in its international dimension, and then at the end, we’ll meet the people left out of the Declaration’s soaring language of equality. The course places the Declaration within its political, intellectual, and global contexts and illuminates why it endures as a text that both inspires and challenges democracy today.