The seventh annual Teaching and Learning Conference (TLC) was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from February 5 to 7, 2010, with 224 attendees onsite. The theme for the meeting was “Advancing Excellence in Teaching Political Science.” Using the working-group model, the TLC track format encourages in-depth discussion and debate on research dealing with the scholarship of teaching and learning.

The reinvigoration of German nationalism in 1859 aroused public interest in the problem of giveing concrete political organization to a growing German national consciousness which developed in the wake of the Austro-Sardinian War. A sense of anxiety led statesmen and publicists of every shade of opinion and from every German state carefully to weigh their particularist interests and political goals against their perceptions of German national interests. Diplomatic and military failures during the war had cast a shadow over the images of Austria and the Confederation. In the face of kleindeutsch demands for immediate political unification under the leadership of Prussia, the advocates of groβdeutsch reform and the promoters of the Mitteleuropa concept defended the existing Confederation and Austria's role in German civic life. The question of Germany's future fractured political barriers. Liberals joined both the kleindeutsch and the grofideutsch camps; some condemned the Confederation, while others defended it. And while some liberals rejected Austria's place in Germany, others made it central.