Humanitas: The American Republic

Humanitas: The American Republic is designed to be a one-semester course ideal for high school students studying American history.

Humanitas: The American Republic guides students through a series of primary documents tracing the growth and evolution of the American experiment. Book 1 explores the creation of a new government and culture, early American literature and religious movements, the path to emancipation, and more. Book 2 explores the onset and duration of the Civil War, the societal reckonings of the reconstruction era, and more. 

Rooted in the Renaissance humanists’ clarion call to return ad fontes, this brand-new upper school humanities curriculum promises to bring students “back to the sources.” Geared towards history, humanities, and humane letters courses, the Humanitas series offers a continuous, unfolding narrative of Western Civilization through a series of carefully curated primary source documents.

Unlike most contemporary approaches to history, which reflect the fashions and biases of the fleeting present, the Humanitas series offers students something more substantial. Following C. S. Lewis’s stout defense of reading primary sources in “On the Reading of Old Books,” Humanitas will help “persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, but it is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire."