The aim of the Fostering Liberal Arts Knowledge and Connections program is to nurture and support faculty collaboration across disciplines with the goal of enriching teaching and research at liberal arts colleges and research universities and promoting the interplay between teaching and research. Our development and support of courses on popular sovereignty at over five institutions, as well as our work developing an edited volume on the topic, has enhanced collaboration in both teaching and research for scholars and enriched undergraduate teaching for students and faculty.

A retreat in January 2017 brought together faculty across disciplines and institutional types for a pedagogy-focused discussion around the topic of popular sovereignty. The retreat focused on the creation of ‘hinge classes’ in the undergraduate curriculum, courses designed to connect the impulse of broad liberal arts pedagogy with specialist learning and inquiry.

 At this time, seven courses on popular sovereignty have been taught: Nicole Mellow (Williams College) and Andrew Perrin (University of North Carolina), jointly designed and taught at both institutions in fall 2018; Thomas Bartscherer (Bard College) taught in spring 2018; Ioannis Evrigenis (Tufts University) taught in spring 2018; Helmut Anheier, Ewa Atanassow, Ira Katznelson, and Christine Landfried (Bard College Berlin with the Hertie School of Governance) team taught in spring 2018, and two courses, with program-connected guests, taught by Atanassow in fall 2019 and spring 2020.