American History Programs

Experience one of the Bard’s plays in a way that Londoners of 400 years ago might have found when you spend a day at the American Shakespeare Center in beautiful Staunton, Virginia. Explore theatrical history in a fascinating director-led workshop, enjoy lunch in local restaurant, and then settle into the Elizabethan-style theater for a performance of The Tempest. Afterward, there’s time to explore historic Staunton on an optional guided tour.

Join historian and writer Laura Macaluso for a day of adventure that travels from Old Town Alexandria along the George Washington Parkway to Mount Vernon and beyond. From an 18th-century tavern to a venerable church, a towering Masonic memorial to estates along the Potomac, the locations recall the life and legacy of George Washington as a general and president.

Join expert on art fraud and former FBI agent Robert K. Wittman on his journey around the world as the senior investigator and founder of the FBI National Art Crime Team. He recounts assignments worthy of a spy novel that nabbed the tomb robbers, thieves, looters, and criminals who are the financial engine of the multi-billion-dollar international industry in illicit artifacts.

In-Person and Online Program: Join award-winning historian and bestselling author Reza Aslan as he highlights the complex and historic ties between America and Iran and the potential of a single individual to change the course of history. Aslan traces the epic journey of Howard Baskerville, a young Christian missionary, from South Dakota to Persia (modern-day Iran) to preach the gospel in the 20th century. But it would be political activism and not Christianity that would define his life and lead to his death as a martyr in a foreign land.

Author and long-time intelligence officer Nicholas Reynolds draws on his new book Need to Know to survey the full story of the birth of American intelligence in the 1940s, as well as the larger-than-life leaders and spies who would shape espionage during wartime and beyond.

Join staff members of the new Capital Jewish Museum on a walking tour that explores the connection between Washington’s monuments and collective memory. Beginning at the museum, move through the heart of the historic downtown Jewish community to visit monuments and memorials connected to local and international Jewish history.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Northwest Washington’s LeDroit Park neighborhood became home to the city’s most prominent African American residents. Join author and literary historian Kim Roberts on a walking tour that visits the homes of Paul Laurence Dunbar, the first African American to gain national eminence as a poet, and his wife, poet and activist Alice Dunbar-Nelson, as well those of other members of the city’s African American intelligentsia who were drawn to LeDroit Park and the surrounding Shaw neighborhood.

Spend a day with Joe Nevin in the Shenandoah and South Branch valleys that focuses on regional and railroad history and offers some spectacular Appalachian scenery as well. The centerpiece is a 3-hour excursion on the diesel-powered Potomac Eagle, the perfect vantage point from which to take in the wild, wooded gorge locally known as the Trough.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Northwest Washington’s LeDroit Park neighborhood became home to the city’s most prominent African American residents. Join author and literary historian Kim Roberts on a walking tour that visits the homes of Paul Laurence Dunbar, the first African American to gain national eminence as a poet, and his wife, poet and activist Alice Dunbar-Nelson, as well those of other members of the city’s African American intelligentsia who were drawn to LeDroit Park and the surrounding Shaw neighborhood.

A sparkle of gold flashed in a river near Coloma, California, touching off a massive wave of gold seekers to California. The Gold Rush of 1849 forever altered California and the nation’s destiny. Join fellow travelers on a 6-day tour around Northern California to see where the adventure unfolded. Highlights include Old Sacramento, the California State Railroad Museum, Sutter's Fort, Chaw'se Indian Grinding Rock and Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Parks, a 2-night stay at the Historic National Exchange Hotel, Empire Mine & Malakoff Diggins State Parks, and scenic Lake Tahoe. 

Best remembered as the longtime editor of the influential weekly magazine Saturday Review, Norman Cousins was also engaged in secret missions behind the Iron Curtain to conduct high-stakes negotiations directly with the Soviet leadership during the decades after WWII. Historian Allen Pietrobon discusses his enormous impact on the course of American public debate, international humanitarianism, and Cold-War diplomacy.

The iconic Zingerman’s Delicatessen in Ann Arbor, Michigan, opened in 1982 as a traditional Jewish deli and food shop that sold great stacked sandwiches and delicious baked goods. Less known is its role in building new food-business opportunities for others in the area. Co-founder Ari Weinzweig joins Christopher W. Wilson, director of experience design at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, to discuss Zingerman’s story and unique approach to management and leadership.

What’s behind the spelling of colonel? Or knight? Why is it four but also forty? Linguist Anne Curzan discusses why an examination of the ever-evolving language whose spelling has been described as “an awesome mess” reveals a treasure trove of wild and wonderful stories about its history and the people who have spoken it (and grappled with its quirks) across the centuries.

Join staff members of the new Capital Jewish Museum on a walking tour that explores the connection between Washington’s monuments and collective memory. Beginning at the museum, move through the heart of the historic downtown Jewish community to visit monuments and memorials connected to local and international Jewish history.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Northwest Washington’s LeDroit Park neighborhood became home to the city’s most prominent African American residents. Join author and literary historian Kim Roberts on a walking tour that visits the homes of Paul Laurence Dunbar, the first African American to gain national eminence as a poet, and his wife, poet and activist Alice Dunbar-Nelson, as well those of other members of the city’s African American intelligentsia who were drawn to LeDroit Park and the surrounding Shaw neighborhood.

Join staff members of the new Capital Jewish Museum on a walking tour that explores the connection between Washington’s monuments and collective memory. Beginning at the museum, move through the heart of the historic downtown Jewish community to visit monuments and memorials connected to local and international Jewish history.

After the end of World War II, six pioneering women were assigned to program the new Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer—for which there were no instructional codes or programming languages to guide them. They succeeded, but their story was never told to the public. Author and documentary filmmaker Kathy Kleiman brings it—and these technological revolutionaries—out of the shadows.

Late in 1755, an army of British regulars and Massachusetts volunteers launched one of the most ambitious and cruel military campaigns in North American history: the capture and exile of Nova Scotia’s French-speaking Catholic settlers known as Acadians. Historian Christopher Hodson of Brigham Young University explores the Acadian diaspora, interweaving the dramatic stories of its perpetrators and survivors with the wider history of 18th-century imperial conflict. 

Hungry railroad passengers prior to the Civil War had meager choices for meals. But once George Pullman’s dining cars came on the scene in the late 19th century, a bountiful new era of service began that often rivaled fine restaurants and hotel dining rooms. Railroad historian Joe Nevin traces the colorful evolution of dining on the rails between the beginning of commercial service in 1830 and the advent of Amtrak using examples from the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, an Eastern pioneer of onboard services.

In-Person and Online Program: Thomas Jefferson once asserted that "for depth of purpose, zeal, and sagacity, no man in Congress exceeded, if any equaled, Sam Adams." But in spite of his celebrated status among America's Founding Fathers, Samuel Adams' life and achievements have been largely overshadowed in the history books. In a spirited conversation educator, author, and speaker Rebecca Boggs Roberts, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stacy Schiff examines this often-overlooked founder.

In-Person and Online Program: French sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America, his seminal assessment of both the American experiment and the future of democracy after a visit to this country in 1831. Georgetown professor and political theorist Joseph Hartman considers the way in which Tocqueville thought through democracy and its problems and what Tocqueville means for us today.

In-Person and Online Program: In the 1920s, a decade of economic prosperity and cultural dynamism, Americans were dancing faster, driving faster, and living faster. Lecturer Stef Woods explores the explosion of new directions the period brought, from the jazz craze to the writers of the Lost Generation to Prohibition. She also considers what comparisons might be drawn between that still-resonant era and today’s ’20s.

Nashville is a 21st-century boom town, a cultural melting pot that attracts residents from across the nation and around the world. If the Ken Burns documentary Country Music sparked your appetite to learn more about the form’s roots and influences, this 5-day  tour offers the perfect way to do it.

Consumers flocked to modern shopping malls when they were introduced soon after World War II and this new way of shopping came to quickly dominate the retail scene. In later years, though, the mall’s demise was equally as rapid and dramatic. In a two-part series, Bill Keene, a lecturer on architecture and urban studies, looks at the social and economic reasons that drew us to the mall, why we left, and what its future might hold.

The American Revolution was one in which Natives fought and died in great numbers and permanently reshaped the balance of power between Europeans and Native Americans on this continent. Historian Richard Bell surveys the Revolutionary War in Native America, with a focus on Molly Brant, an Iroquois woman who emerged as the long, bitter period’s most important military and cultural broker.

While Lincoln’s delivery of the Gettysburg Address lasted scarcely two minutes, it had a lasting impact on world history and his enduring legacy as people through the ages have looked to his words for inspiration. During this centennial year of the Lincoln Memorial, author and journalist Chuck Raasch explores the history of this iconic address that surprised onlookers and was ridiculed by the press—yet remains one of the greatest speeches ever given.

Writer Audrey Hall and photographer Chase Reynolds Ewald have been following in the hoofprints of the American bison since their first childhood visits to Yellowstone National Park. They draw on their book, Bison: Portrait of an Icon, to tell the story of the species, highlighting its history, cultural significance, near decimation and remarkable comeback, and share some surprising tidbits about these all-American beasts.

Is an 18th-century document still the right blueprint for the most powerful country in the world at a time of breathtaking social and technological change? Humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson surveys the changing place of the Constitution in U.S. history and considers the proposals for constitutional change that are getting increased attention as America moves into greater and greater paralysis.

Drawing on material from her book The Three-Cornered War  (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History in 2021), Megan Kate Nelson examines why and how the desert Southwest—New Mexico, Arizona, and southern California—became an important site of conflict among U.S. soldiers, Confederate Texans, and Indigenous peoples during the American Civil War.

Unprecedented strides were made in the science of medicine during the Civil War, laying the foundations for the system we know today. Drawing on her book Healing a Divided Nation, author and documentary filmmaker Carole Adrienne tracks this remarkable transformation in its cultural and historical context, illustrating how the rapid advancements made in these four years reverberated throughout the western world for years to come.

The Chesapeake & Ohio Canal covers over 20,000 acres along the Potomac and is one of the nation’s most diverse national parks in terms of both natural species and historical significance. Aidan Barnes of the C&O Canal Trust surveys its colorful history, near demise and rescue, and its emergence as a true national treasure.

Step back in time as you stroll along Old Town Alexandria’s red-brick sidewalks to explore how Christmases of yesteryear were celebrated here. The rich history shared by guide Lynn O’Connell covers the people, places, and traditions that make Old Town a picture-perfect spot during the holiday season.

As America’s ambassador to Japan in the decade that led up to WWII, Joseph C. Grew’s prescient warnings to American leaders about the risks of Japan’s raging nationalism and ambitious militarism were often disregarded in Washington. Author Steve Kemper examines Grew’s tenure in Japan, offering a backstage glimpse at these explosive years from vantage points including the Imperial Palace, the Japanese cabinet, and Grew’s own perspective from the American embassy in Tokyo.

The conventional wisdom that Christmas provided enslaved African Americans in the Civil War era with a respite from labor and punishment is wrong, says historian Robert E. May. He examines how slavery’s most punitive features persisted at holiday time and how false assumptions about slave Christmases later became harnessed to cultural myths that undergirded white supremacy in the United States.

Step back in time as you stroll along Old Town Alexandria’s red-brick sidewalks to explore how Christmases of yesteryear were celebrated here. The rich history shared by guide Lynn O’Connell covers the people, places, and traditions that make Old Town a picture-perfect spot during the holiday season.

Kick off your holidays in grand style with a day spent visiting two special destinations. Begin at Winterthur to view the opulent holiday décor and take in the exhibition Jacqueline Kennedy and H. F. du Pont: From Winterthur to the White House. An evening visit to nearby Longwood Gardens offers time on your own to relax, wander the grounds, and take in the spectacular seasonal decorations.

Author and historian Coleen Christian Burke, a 2014 White House design partner, leads a journey through Christmas history as she reveals how the annual decorating themes developed by first ladies are turned into sparkling realities. She also discusses how the holiday White House functions as both a private home and public space and offers views of some of the most memorable seasonal settings created at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

In the decades following World War II, a myriad of factors shaped modern Los Angeles, including the growth of industry, the evolution of the entertainment business, and the city’s transformation into the home of notable cultural and educational institutions. Bill Keene, a lecturer in history, urban studies, and architecture, examines the social and economic forces that made Los Angeles the powerhouse it is today.

Dramatic weather might seem to be a new phenomenon, but weather and climate change have been shaping human history for thousands of years. Historian Caroline Winterer examines a series of weather-driven turning points that were strong enough to force migration, end wars, and create famines—and how the aftermath of past climate change might affect our future.

Step back in time as you stroll along Old Town Alexandria’s red-brick sidewalks to explore how Christmases of yesteryear were celebrated here. The rich history shared by guide Lynn O’Connell covers the people, places, and traditions that make Old Town a picture-perfect spot during the holiday season.

From its start in the early 1950s, the talk show has been one of television’s most versatile and durable formats. Media expert Brian Rose surveys its changing appeal from decade to decade and examines how the talk show—and its hosts—continue to provide viewers with a lively mix of entertainment, information, and compelling conversation.

Originally published in 1776, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations was lauded by America’s founders as a landmark work of Enlightenment thinking about national wealth, statecraft, and moral virtue. Harvard University lecturer and author Glory Liu traces how generations of Americans have read, reinterpreted, and weaponized Smith’s ideas over time.