Frontiers of American Democracy?: Two 19th Century Views of Western Homesteads
 

A Nebraska Sod House, from the Libary of Congress collections

Homesteading on the Washington Frontier, from the University of Washington collections 

Course Description
  This course will examine the major historiographic perspectives on Western U.S. history.  In recent years, new interpretations of our national experience in the American West have come to prominence in the profession, re-energizing what had been a largely moribund subfield within U.S. history.  Despite profound differences in perspective and methodology, both the “Old Western” and the “New Western” historians share one basic assumption: The expansion of the American nation into the trans-Mississippi region was critical to the development of our national identity and character.  Whether the West is conceived of as place or process, the occupation of the West called  “expansionism” or “conquest,” Western U.S. history has become a vibrant subfield within the discipline. We will devote this semester to reading many of the classics in the field, to understand both the points of departure and the intellectual linkages between the Old and New Western histories.
   As a graduate level survey, this course is organized around four themes: Expansionism/Conquest, Frontier Development/Imperialism, Settlement and Urbanization, and Environmental Change.  Students will be introduced to both the methodological and theoretical bases of each historiographic perspective on these themes.  This course is an intensive reading and writing seminar, primarily for graduate students in history.  As such, the class meetings will be devoted to discussion and students will be expected to have completed the assigned readings before the class begins.

Course Requirements:
     There are several graded components to this course: attendance and regular participation in class discussions (30% of course grade), two class presentations on the assigned readings (10% each), a short (7-10 pages) critical book review (20%), and a final paper (15-20 pages), which may take one of the following forms: a journal on the assigned readings or a historiographic paper on a topic of the student’s choice, related to the course subject (30%).  Students who do not attend class meetings will be downgraded significantly.  There will be no examinations in this course.
 
 

Topics and Readings

Week
1         September 2         Labor Day.  No class meeting!
2         September 9         Course introduction.

3         September 16        Frederick Jackson Turner and conceptualizing the “Frontier”
             Readings:              Faragher, ed., Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner, 1-100, 140-158
                                            Klein, Frontiers of Historical Imagination, 13-57

4         September 23        Understanding Turner and his legacy
             Readings:                Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America, 11-37 [R]
                                              Klein, 58-128
                                              David Wrobel, The End of American Exceptionalism, 3-52
                                             Gerry Kearns, “The Virtuous Circle of Facts and Values in the New Western
                                                 History,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88(1998), 377-409 [R]
                                              Earl Pomeroy, “Toward a Reorientation of Western History: Continuity and Environment,”
                                                Mississippi Valley Historical Review 41(1959), 579-600 [R] Available online:
                                                Pomeroy article, Mississippi Valley Historical Review

5         September 30         Ethnohistory and the contours of cultural conflict: A case study – the Spanish borderlands
             Readings:                 Herbert Bolton, “The Epic of Greater America,” American Historical Review,
                                                    38(1933): 448-474 [R] Available online:   Bolton, American Historical Review
                                              Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, 1-17, 281-333, 371-395, 567-586 [R]
                                              Ramón Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away, 3-94 [R]
                                              Klein, 129-213

6         October 7                Resistance and accommodation on the borders, frontiers, and margins
             Readings:                 Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron, “From Borderlands to Borders: Empires,
                                                    Nation-States, and the Peoples in between in North American History,” AmericanHistorical
                                                    Review 104(1999), 814-841 [R] Available online: Adelman & Aron, AHR
                                            John Mack Faragher, “‘More Motley than Mackinaw’: From Ethnic Mixing to Ethnic
                                                 Cleansing on the Frontier of the Lower Missouri, 1783-1833,” 304-326 [R]
                                              Richard White, “The Winning of the West: The Expansion of the Western Sioux in the
                                                 Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Journal of American History 65(1978), 319-343 [R]
                                                 Available online:  White, Journal of American History
                                              Albert Hurtado, Intimate Frontiers

7         October 14             Significance of the Frontier in American culture
             Readings:                 Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Lands
                                               Klein, read: 213-245, skim: 246-end
 
 

8         October 21             Environment, Frontier Development, and Democracy
             Readings:                 Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains, 3-46, 85-204 [R]
                                               Webb, “The Crisis of a Frontierless Democracy,” in Divided We Stand, 154-216 [R]
                                               Bernard DeVoto, “The West: A Plundered Province,” Harper’s Magazine, 169/170(1934),
                                                    355-364 [R]
                                               R. Douglas Hurt, “The Great Plains,” Agricultural History 75(2001), 395-405 [R]
                                             Wrobel, 71-142

                                      Critical book review due at the beginning of class, October 21
 

9         October 28             Internal Empires?
             Readings:                 Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny, 189-248, 272-297 [R]
                                             Tomás Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines, 17-74, 107-130 [R]

10         November 4         Diplomacy and Imperialism
             Readings:                  William Appleman Williams, Empire as a Way of Life, 3-110 [R]
                                                Richard Drinnon, Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian Hating and Empire
                                                   Building, 232-351 [R]
                                                Walter Nugent, “Frontiers and Empires in the Late Nineteenth Century,” in Limerick, et.al.,
                                                    eds., Trails: Toward a New Western History, 161-181 [R]
                                                Patricia Nelson Limerick, “Going West and Ending Up Global,” Western Historical
                                                   Quarterly 32(2001), 5-24 [R]
                                                Paul Sabin, “Home and Abroad: The Two ‘Wests’ of Twentieth-Century United States
                                                     History,” Pacific Historical Review LXVI(1997), 305-335 [R]
                                                Wrobel, 53-68
 
 

11         November 11       Population growth, dispersal, migration and social mobility
              Readings:                 Walter Nugent, Structures of American Social History, 54-86 [R]
                                                Susan Lee Johnson, Roaring Camp

12         November 18        Fragmentation or Inclusiveness?  New social histories of the West
              Readings:                 Walter Nugent, Into the West, 3-17, 131-173 [R]
                                                Linda Gordon, The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction
 
 

13         November 25         Ecological interpretations of history
              Readings:                 James Malin, History and Ecology, xiii-xxix, 1-67, 105-143, 192-218 [R]
                                                Andrew Isenberg, The Destruction of the Bison

14         December 2          Natural resources and the development of western capitalism
              Readings:                 David Igler, Industrial Cowboys

15         December 9          Western Apocalypse
              Readings:               Valerie Kulutz, The Tainted Desert
                                               Wrobel, 143-146

                    Final paper due no later than 7 p.m. Monday, December 16, in my office, FO2-208
 

WITHDRAWAL POLICY: Students who do not attend the first two class meetings will be dropped from this class.   It is the student’s responsibility to file the appropriate withdrawal form at the Admissions and Records Office.   Please note the following university deadlines:
 September 16:  Last day to withdraw without receiving a “W” grade; no signatures needed
 September 23:  Last day to add course or designate CR/NC grading option
 November 22:    Last day to withdraw without dean’s signature
 December 13: Last day to withdraw (requires instructor’s, chairperson’s, & dean’s signatures)