Baala Shakya, Photography Editor

Students and locals packed Battell Chapel on Thursday for the first meeting of the one-time-only course “America at 250: A History,” with an introductory lecture taught by history professors Beverly Gage ’94, Joanne Freeman and David Blight.

The course had roughly 480 registered students, according to course demand statistics. The lecture was also open to the New Haven area community as part of the DeVane lecture series. It filled Battell Chapel — which seats 850 people, according to the chaplain’s office.

“This is a different kind of course,” Freeman said. “There are many things that I find particularly fascinating about this country’s history. One of them is the sheer sense of big propositions — breaking away in revolution is a huge risk in and of itself.”

When the course was announced last semester, it was supposed to have eight discussion sections to accommodate 144 students.

“We are hoping not to have to cap the class,” Gage said in an April interview with the News. “My understanding is that it’s opening with eight sections available, but if those fill up we will be able to add new sections. The expectation is we’ll just keep adding as much as we need to.”

However, the course is currently full, and students not enrolled in the course were not allowed to attend the first lecture, according to the course’s Canvas page. The course has 27 sections listed on Yale Course Search.

Each lecture will be posted on Yale’s YouTube channel two weeks after it takes place, Gage said during Thursday’s lecture.

During the lecture, the professors stressed that American history wasn’t just about golden ages or praising the Founding Fathers. Rather, they said, the semester would teach attendees about the country’s debates, struggles, experiments and triumphs.

The course’s invention took shape in anticipation of America’s semiquincentennial anniversary in 2026 — 250 years since the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Second Continental Congress.

Judy Buzzell, a former professor at Southern Connecticut State University from Branford, attended Thursday’s lecture. She said the open nature of the course will benefit both Yale and the local community.

“The more that Yale can open itself up to the larger community, the better its relations will be, and the more the community will grow and develop from the exchange of ideas,” she said.

Buzzell, 79, added that being in a room with undergraduates is “energizing.”

“They have perspectives that I don’t have,” she said. “They have experiences that I don’t have. They’re really growing up in a very different world, and I want to hear about it.”

Arthur Nacht DRA ’06, a fellow at Saybrook College, was enthused by the course’s relevance today.

“The opportunity to hear a course with a grand view, such as a sweep of 250 years, is very exciting,” Nacht said. “History is still in us and is affecting everything that’s happening in the current moment.”

After the first class, Freeman told the News that she found the high turnout “cheering.”

“To see this many people, students and in the community, this interested in learning history at this moment –– it doesn’t get better, right?” she said.

Freeman said the short time frame of the course poses a unique challenge.

While teaching about the American Revolution normally takes her a whole semester, she said, she will dedicate only one lecture to the topic in this course.

Each professor is slated to teach eight lectures based on their areas of expertise.

“With 2026 upon us, there couldn’t be a better moment for the three of us to be thinking about big questions in American history so that people here can go and think for themselves next year as to how they’re thinking about the past, how they’re thinking about the present, how they’re thinking about the future,” Freeman said.

The DeVane lecture series began in 1969, named after former Yale College Dean William Clyde DeVane, according to the website of the University president’s office, which sponsors the series.

Jaeha Jang and Olivia Woo contributed reporting.