Westward Expansion and the Constitution in the Early American Republic

FAIN: EH-231269-15

University of Oklahoma, Norman (Norman, OK 73019-3003)
Kevin Butterfield (Project Director: February 2015 to February 2017)
Paul A. Gilje (Co Project Director: August 2015 to February 2017)

A two-week summer institute for twenty-five college and university teachers on the U.S. Constitution and American westward expansion in the early Republic.

The Institute for the American Constitutional Heritage (IACH), an interdisciplinary center for the study of American constitutionalism at the University of Oklahoma, in conjunction with the Department of History proposes to host a two-week Summer Institute for College and University Teachers in June 2016. We offered a successful NEH Institute on this topic in the summer of 2014 and plan to follow the same basic program in 2016 with some minor adjustments. This Institute will explore the social, cultural, and political dimensions of American westward expansion through the lens of the U.S. Constitution and the struggles over its interpretation between the American Revolution and the conclusion of the Mexican-American War in 1848. In this Summer Institute, we hope to bring current and future college faculty together to study the history of the American West, race, Indian removal, and the early history of the federal Constitution and the republic it created.