History 471: History of the Westward Movement
CSULB, Prof. Quam-Wickham, Spring 2004
This is the e-syllabus for this course!
**** Please note:
This page is currently under construction. Please check back for
updates!
History 471: History of the Westward Movement
CSULB, Prof. Quam-Wickham, Spring 2004
This is the e-syllabus for this course!
**** Please note:
This page is currently under construction. Please check back for
updates!
Course description and Requirements
This course provides an introduction to the history of the American West from the colonial period to the present. Course topics include investigation of subjects covered in traditional western history courses, such as the frontier experience, population movements, expansion of American ideals and institutions, and regionalism. In addition, this course will examine aspects of the “new western history,” including issues of gender, race and ethnic relations, and the environment and ecological change. A special theme of this course will be an exploration of Western myths and realities in American culture, drawing on visual representations, literature, music, and films about the region.
Assignments include regular attendance and participation in class discussions (20% of course grade), two short (3 pages) analytical papers (15% each), a midterm (20%) final term paper (25%), and a class presentation based on the final paper (5%). In addition, there will be extra credit opportunities. Students will be provided with a comprehensive study guide at least a week before the midterm exam. A student must complete all assignments before a final course grade will be assigned. Students will be expected to attend class regularly, complete assigned readings before class, and participate in special class activities (computer simulation game, movie viewing). All required films and the computer game simulation will be available at the appropriate reserve desk in the Main Library.
Required Readings
Cabeza
de Vaca, Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America
Colin
Calloway, ed., Our Hearts Fell to the Ground: Plains Indian Views of
How the West Was Lost
Pater Nabokov, Two Leggings
Jane
Jacobs, ed., A Schoolteacher in Old Alaska
Dayton
Duncan, Miles From Nowhere
Several
short essays available in course reader
Optional textbook: Richard White, “It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A New History of the American West
All
books are available for purchase in the CSULB student bookstore.
In addition, all books and articles are on 3-hour course reserve in the
Reserve Book Room of the Main Library (First-floor east).
1
January 27 Course introduction: Problems and
Paradigms
January 29 “Frontier”: The “F-Word” of
western history
Readings:
Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American
History” [R]
Enrichment: Review Professor
Catherine Lavender's Questions to Ponder on Turner
[Important note: Turner's essay is available online through this link (above)]
A Tlingit family, c. 1800
2
February 3
Discovery and exploration
February 5
Conquest and native peoples
Readings:
Cabeza de Vaca, Adventures, 7-140
Review Reading
guide for Cabeza de Vaca
[Optional: White, “It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own,” 3-53]
Special activity: visual & cinematic representations
of the encounter, in class
Visit exhibition The
illustrating Traveler: Adventures in Illustration in North America and
the Caribbean, 1760-1895
Winslow Homer, Skirmish in the Wilderness, 1864
3
February 10 Visions of the conquerors
Enrichment, see Review Explorers'
images presented in class
February 12 Demographic
changes
Readings:
Calloway, ed., Our Hearts Fell to the Ground, 1-70 [Optional:
White, 55-84
Review Reading
guide for Calloway
Visit the Library of Congress exhibit, Meeting
of Frontiers: Introduction on comparative conquest and colonization
Enrichment, visit the Online
Exhibit -- 1492: An Ongoing Voyage
Review Smallpox
chronology
Emmanuel
Leutze, Westward the Course of Empire Taken Its Way, 1861-- A composite
of several landscapes
4
February 17 The “Indian Problem”
February 19
Introduction of commercialism and market capitalism
Readings:
Calloway, 71-132, plus texts of The
Cherokee Nation V. Georgia (1831) and the Fort
Laramie Treaty, 1851 (Lakota)
[Optional: White, 85-118]
Review Maps
presented in class and Visit Cultural
Maps page -- University of Virginia
Visit the Mountain
Men and the Fur Trade page
For enrichment, read Two
Native Views of Euro-American Trade Goods
Frederic
Remington, The Buffalo Runner, 1911
5
February 24 The Federal presence: Territory
and sectionalism
February 26 Indian cultures: Pawnee, Crow,
and Sioux
Readings:
Calloway, 133-169; Nabokov, 1-65 [Optional:
White, 119-178]
Review Maps
of U.S. Expansion
Review U.S.
Congressional Documents: Indian Land Cessions: List of Tribes
Visit Crow,
Pawnee, and Lakota Tribal Home Pages
Albert
Bierstadt, The Oregon Trail, 1869 - note the artist's use of color:
Is the golden sun in the East or the West?
6
March 2
Farming on the frontier: Western agrarianism
March 4
Migration and the road West -- Discussion
Special activity: Play one game of Oregon Trail II before
class meeting
Readings:
Stories
of the Migration West and Nabokov, 66-114
Read Questions
to consider as you travel the trails
Visit Oregon
Trail Web Site or Oregon
Trail Interpretive Center Museum Page or PBS'
In Search of the Oregon Trail
Pamphlets
promoting the West's mineral rushes abounded during the 19th century, as
in this example from the Klondike Gold Rush of the 1890s
7
March 9
Mineral rushes
Readings:
Stories
of the California Gold Rush
[Optional: White, 236-297]
Enrichment: Visit the California
As I Saw It -- Web Page
Special activity: View film Thousand Pieces of Gold before
class (on reserve at the library)
Review Film
Guide and Questions for Thousand Pieces of Gold
March 11 Midterm Examination --Bring a blue book!
Grant
Wood's Fertility (1939) celebrates the agricultural revolution on
the Great Plains
8
March 16
Urban development in the nineteenth-century
March 18
Ecological Revolutions
Readings:
Nabokov, 115-176; Donald Worster, “Cowboy Ecology,” 34-52 (R)
[Optional: White, 212-297]
Enrichment, visit the Museum
of the City of San Francisco -- 1906 Earthquake Online Exhibit
Enrichment, visit the Denver Public Library
Historical Photograph Collections:
History
of the American West (American Memory, Library of Congress)
Review Short
reading guide to Worster's article
Visit the Library of Congress' Evolution
of the Conservation Movement Web Site
Visit the virtual Range
of Light and the Sierra Club's John
Muir Web Site
"Cowboy
Dancing Lessons," Nebraska, c. 1880s
9
March 23
Natural resources, water, ranching, and cowboy culture
March 25
The closing of the frontier?
Readings:
Dee Garceau, "Nomads, Bunkies, Cross-Dressers, and Family Men," 149-168
[R]; Karen Merrill, “Domesticated
Bliss: Ranchers and Their Animals,” 169-184 (R); Duncan, Miles from
Nowhere, 1-21
[Optional: White, 270-297, 391-430]
Review Reading
Guide for Merrill
Special activity: An introduction to cowboy songs, in class
Visit the Ghost
Dance Photos Exhibit
Enrichment, visit the Central Pacific
Railroad Photographic History Museum -- Online
Enrichment, visit Crossing
the Frontier: Photographs of the Developing West, 1849 to the Present
Allotment
day, Pine Ridge, c. 1900 -- from the collections of the Nebraska Historical
Society
10
March 30
The federal government, the Dawes Act, and the end of the Indian Wars
Video, in class: Geronimo: The Last of the Resistance
Readings:
Nabokov, 177-197; Calloway, 168-207 [Optional: White, 431-457]
Enrichment, visit the extensive material on the Dawes Act at CSU-San Marcos'
Native
American Documents Project
Exodusters,
Kansas, c. 1880s [American Memory, Library of Congress]
11
April 13
Fictional wests – Discussion
Readings:
[Optional: White, 353-387]
Special activity: Watch at least one western feature film from
approved
list before class
Enrichment, visit the Buffalo
Bill Web Page
April 15
The Women's West
Readings:
Jacobs, A Schoolteacher in Old Alaska, 13-152; Hurtado, "Women Settlers"
[R]; "Reclaiming Polly Bemis"
Special activity: Watch the film Heartland before
class (on reserve at the Library)
Review Film
Guide and Questions for Heartland
Enrichment, view the excellent online exhibit Women
Artists of the American West: Past and Present
"Indian
Merchants at the Treadwell Mines," Alaska -- note that all of these Indian
merchants are women
12
April 20
Ethnicity, Class and western culture
Special activity: Listen to Wobbly protest songs, in class
Enrichment, visit the PBS'
website -- I.W.W. songwriter Joe Hill
April 22
Racial identity and politics at the turn of the century
Readings:
Duncan, Miles From Nowhere, 23-98; Jacobs, 153-193 [Optional:
White, 353-387]
Special activity: Music of the Wild West Show, in class
Visit the Multicultural
West: A Resource Site
Alexandre
Hogue's Dust Bowl (1933) depicts a quite different view than Grant
Wood of the legacy of farming in the West
13
April 27
Chaos
and catastrophe: The Great Depression
April 29
Federal Development in the 1930s & 1940s West
Readings:
Duncan, 99-172; Jacobs, 351-170
Men fishing at Wy-Am (Celilo
Falls), ancestral fishing gounds on the Columbia River, 1956 -- a year
before it was flooded by a dam
14
May 4
Self-Determination
Readings:
Duncan, 173-238 [Optional: White, 496-533]
Enrichment, visit the web sites for the Alcatraz
Indian Occupation and American
Indian Movement Documents from MSU
Enrichment, visit Blue Corn Comics'Native
Stereotype of the Month web site
May 6
Politics in the Post-War West
Special activity: View film High Noon before class (on reserve
at the library)
Review Film
Guide and Questions for High Noon
Begin student presentations
Thomas
Hart Benton's view of modern Westerners
Student Presentations
FINAL TERM PAPER DUE -- In my office, FO2-208, by 11 a.m., Thursday May 20, 2004