Donald Trump’s improbable journey from the Trump Tower to the White House is often described as “without precedent.” And, yet, Trump’s campaign and presidency have reworked familiar themes in US history: nativism, populism, the politics of nostalgia, politics as spectacle, and the recurrent efforts to rejuvenate or re-masculinize American society. The seminar revisits these topics in some detail as it critically explores diverse historical frames and perspectives available for understanding the Trump phenomenon. Conversely, we will ask in what way Trump’s presidency alters our view of history and requires new historical thinking about the American political system, public sphere, and ideology and the relationship between process and individual actors in history.