“The central and most persistent story in American history,” according to William Cronon, “is the story of the western frontier.” The very words evoke images of bravery, daring, rugged individualism, frontier democracy and freedom that are still powerful in defining what it means to be “an American.” Why is this? Are these images we have learned from movies, pictures and stories or was there something about the westward movement that brought out such values and qualities? This power of this mythology is evident in the media discussions of the presidential candidates this election year. We will examine both the contemporary manifestations of the west through movies and literature, as well as through the vibrant and often contentious historiography of the West, from Frederick Jackson Turner to the new Western historians like Donald Worster and Patricia Limerick. In this course we will focus on the movement through the Old Northwest and the Great American Desert, giving special attention to local history and resources and primary sources such as diaries kept during the westward journey. While developing a general understanding of the political, social, and cultural dynamics of the westward movement, this class will focus on three central questions: 1) What was the intersection of expansion and resistance and how has this changed over time? 2)how did this movement affect the environment and what various environmental ethics shaped (and continue to shape) resource use? 3) what is the legacy (“persistent story”) of the frontier and how does its portrayal in literature and film affect American ideas of freedom, democracy, redemptive violence, and political leadership and policy today?

Texts

Patricia Limerick, Clyde Milner, eds. Trails: Toward a New Western History

Julie Roy Jeffrey, Frontier Women: “Civilizing” the west?

Donald Worster, Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West

Jane Tompkins, West of Everything: The Inner life of Westerns

Louis L’Amour, Rider of the Lost Creek

Sherman Alexi, The Toughest Indian in the World

Various essays, primary source documents and hand-outs including but not limited to:

            Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”

            http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1893turner.html

            Patrick Reddy, “Bush, the true cowboy?” UPI May 19, 2004.

            Suzanne Fields, “Searching for the Alpha Male” Washington Times, March 25, 2004

            Kenneth Porter, “The Labor of Black Cowboys”

            Nat Love, “Deadwood Dick”

            John Opie, “Frontier in Environmental Perspective”

            Vine Deloria, “Federal Indian Policy”

            Richard White, “Outlaw Gangs and Social Bandits”

            Sarah Deutsch, “Race Relations in the West 1865-1990

            Robert Beck, “Louis L’Amour and the Myth of Constructive Violence”

            Robert Hine, “Image of the West in Art”

            Thomas Frank, “What’s the Matter with Kansas? (Metropolitan books 2004).

Videos

            500 Nations

            The Way West

            The Way the West was Lost

            The Virginian

            cowboy movie: class choice

Requirements

40% Response papers to four of the five sections 5-7 pp each.. (10% each)

25% Individual project: Explore the origins and impact of one contemporary manifestation of western mythology , or create a teaching unit on some aspect of the U.S. west.

5% Geography and Map work

10% Seminar Leadership and participation

20% Historiography Paper This paper can support your research. Look at 5-7 sources (must include both primary and secondary sources) and discuss them in a historiographic essay of 7-10 pp. Be sure to use the readings frm Trails to help you frame your essay.

Schedule of readings and DUE DATES

Aug 26 Introduction/ first impressions/ questions you bring 1. http://www.catsprn.com/cowboys.htm

The West of Images

Aug 30 Read Robert Hine “Image of West in Art”

`          study pictures following p 144 in “Trails”

            Patrick Reddy, “Bush, the True Cowboy?”

Sept 2 Read Tompkins 1-19. 131-156

            Watch Cowboy movie! (See Tompkins pp 235-236 for ideas (not limiting)

What can we know and how do we know it? Historians and Western history

Sept 6 Frederick Jackson Turner, “Significance of the Frontier”

            Due: Individual proposals

Sept 9 Limerick, 3-80

            DUE: Response paper to the movies and art

            Seminar leader: ____________________________________

Sept 13 Limerick 81-138

            Worster 19-33

            Seminar leader: _______________________________

Sept 16 Limerick 139-214

            DUE: Bibliography for Historiographic Essay

Land and Freedom

Sept 20 The Eternal Frontier: Taking the long view of land– a 65 million year perspective

Read Opie, “Frontier History in Environmental Perspective”

            Read Tompkins 69-130

Sept 23 Cowboy Ecology, Hydraulic Society and Grassland Follies

            Worster 34-64; 93-105 ; Land policy outline

            Seminar Leader_________________________________

Sept 27 Native American Perspectives on Land

            Nabokov and handouts; review Tompkins 7-10;

            Vine Deloria, “Federal Indian Policy”

            Video: 500 Nations

Sept 30 Grounds for Identity

            Read Worster, 225-254

            Seminar Leader _____________________________

Oct 4 Class discussion of western images in the news–Each person brings in one article or video clip (Especially watch for international media using cowboy images of US).

            DUE: Response paper to Land and Freedom

Oct 7 Mid semester Break

Frontier, Democracy and Violence 

Oct 11 review Turner

            read L’Amour, “Lost Rider”

            Seminar Leader__________________________

Oct 14 read Tompkins 23-45; 205-233

            Seminar Leader _________________________

Oct 18 read Beck, “Louis L’amour and the Myth of Constructive Violence”

            various essays TBA on election and political uses of “constructive violence”

Oct 21 Video: How the West was Lost

            Read, White “ Outlaw Gangs and Social Bandits”

Gender and the Frontier

Oct 25 Women and the Language of men

            Tompkins 47-68;

            Suzanne Fields, “Searching for the Alpha Male”

            DUE: Response Paper to Democracy and Violence Readings

Oct 28 Freedom from norms or preservers of norms?

            Jeffrey, 3-97

            Seminar Leader ______________________

Nov 1 “Civilization”

            Jeffrey, 98-178