Course

Americans have always been fascinated with the idea of place, especially the West, and with its collateral idea, the frontier (if such a thing ever existed). This course is designed as an exploration of these ideas and as an introduction to the major themes and arguments in the history of the trans-Mississippi West, the region most closely identified with “frontier.” As class participants might expect, the class is an intensive reading in which the emphasis is on interpretation rather than the recall of facts. (A scholar once remarked, “A readings course is the process of stuffing oneself on books until one is done up like a Thanksgiving turkey.”) The turkey business aside, this is an “old timey” graduate seminar, in which the emphasis is on discussion and the exchange of ideas. But wait, there’s more. In this iteration of the course, we also be working with some primary documents so that participants, first, obtain some notion of what kind of sources are available and, second, acquire an idea of what it is to western history.

Books

The following books are required for the course. They are available in the Campus Bookstore. There is also a reading only accessible via the Web as well as a handout that 1) will be handed out in class as a photocopy or 2) be placed on the Web.

Patricia Nelson Limerick,

The Legacy of Conquest

Frederick Jackson Turner,

The Frontier in American History

Bernard DeVoto, ed.,

The Journals of Lewis and Clark

Elliott West,

The Way to the West: Essays on the Central Plains

William G. Robbins,

Colony and Empire

George J. Sanchez,

Becoming Mexican American

Mark Reisner,

Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

Colin G. Calloway,

One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West Before Lewis and Clark

Martha Sandweiss,

Print the Legend: Photography and the American West

Susan Lee Johnson,

Roaring Camp

Hal K. Rothman,

Devil's Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth-Century American West

Philip J. Deloria,

Indians in Unexpected Places

Robert Hine & John Mack Faragher,

The American West: A New Interpretive History

Steven Lubet,

Murder in Tombstone: The Forgotten Trial of Wyatt Earp

Blogs

One of the requirements for the course is maintenance of a blog. The best bet is Blogger, a free service from Google. And we know free is good. Simply register and begin setting up your blog. There are a number of designs suitable for history but please avoid anything on a black or dark background with light or white type. Known as “reversing out” among graphic designers, this format is very difficult to read. Be sure to enable comments and the RSS feed so that you can access your classmates’ blogs using a newsreader. This will save you an enormous amount of time. Or, you can simply use the “Students” list on the website.