HISTORY
281:
GRADUATE SEMINAR IN WESTERN AND BORDERLANDS HISTORY
Professor: Karl Jacoby
Department of History
Box
Providence
Office: Sharpe House 307
Office
Hours: Wednesdays, 12-2
PM
E-mail:
Karl_Jacoby@brown.edu
Phone: 863-3009
OVERVIEW:
Although the American West was central to the
work of such leading nineteenth-century historians as Francis Parkman
and
Frederick Jackson Turner, only in the last decade or so has it
re-emerged as
one of the most dynamic fields in American history. For the
region's
latest generation of scholars--sometimes dubbed the “new western
historians”--the West's complex racial composition, often forbidding
yet fragile
environment, wars of conquest against Mexican and native societies,
boom and
bust development, and rapid urbanization have all proven fertile
terrain for a
wide range of fresh approaches to understanding the American
past.
Over the course of the semester, we will familiarize ourselves with several of the key debates surrounding this recent work on the American West and assess the new scholarship's utility for improving our understanding of not only the history of the American west but of the United States and North America as a whole. The class will focus particular attention on the newly emerging field of borderlands history, which has been especially influential in the last few years in prompting historians of the American West to grapple more deeply with notions of empire and imperialism, the contingent nature of state building and of race, and with transnational and comparative units of analysis.
CLASS
FORMAT:
The class is designed as a
graduate-level discussion seminar, open to advanced undergraduates only
with
the permission of the instructor. For all students, a central
component
of the course will be learning how to conduct classroom
discussions. Each
week, one or more students will, after consultation with the professor,
start
the class by framing the week's reading and raising what they think
consider to
be the most important points for that week's discussion. While
primarily
concerned with historiography, the course will also address questions
of
methodology. Towards this end, the professor will occasionally
introduce
primary documents drawn from the week's readings for the students to
analyze in
class.
It
is expected that all students will conduct themselves with
a spirit of lively yet tolerant exchange, in which disagreements are
welcomed
and responded to with respect. Since
discussion is so central to the seminar format, it is essential that
all
students come to class having completed the assigned reading and having
silenced all beepers, cell phones, and other intruders from the outside
world. Prompt, regular attendance is
expected of all class participants.
Cheating
and plagiarism will not be tolerated under any circumstances. Should students have any question as to what
constitutes appropriate academic behavior, they are encouraged to
consult with
the professor or Brown's
Academic Code.
ASSIGNMENTS:
Students are expected to complete
three assignments over the course of the semester, two written and one
oral.
- Write short (8-10
page) historiographical essay comparing
two of the books that we read this semester. This
essay is due
- Lead (either
individually or with a partner) classroom discussion of a particular
week’s set of readings. The timing of this assignment
will be determined on February 14.
- Complete a major
research or historiographical paper, on a
subject to be determined in consultation with the professor. This essay is due on or before May 11.
REQUIRED
TEXTS:
The following books are available
for sale in the Brown bookstore and on reserve at Rockefeller
Library.
The assigned articles are all available on-line through this
website.
Because of licensing agreements, some of the links are only active
on-campus or
through the Brown server. Please plan accordingly.
James
Brooks, Captives
and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Captivity in the Southwest
Borderlands
Neil Foley, The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor
Whites
in
Linda
Gordon, Great
Ben Johnson,
Revolution
in Texas: How a Forgotten Rebellion and
its Bloody Suppression Turned Mexicans into Americans
Susan Johnson, Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California
Gold Rush
Beth LaDow, The Medicine Line:
Life and Death
on a North American Borderland
Erika Lee, At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration During the
Exclusion Era,
1882-1943
Gunther Peck, Reinventing Free
Labor: Padrones and Immigrant Workers
in the North American West,
1880-1930
Andrés Reséndez,
Changing
National Identities at the Frontier:
George Sánchez, Becoming Mexican
American:
Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945
Samuel Truett and Elliott Young, Continental
Crossroads: Remapping U.S.-Mexico Borderlands History
Richard White, Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in
the Great
Lakes Region, 1650-1815
Elliott Young, Catarino
Garza’s
Revolution On The Texas-Mexico Border
CLASS
SCHEDULE:
Jan.
31:
First
Meeting
Feb.
7:
Richard White, Middle Ground, ix-185,
469-523
Daniel Usner, "The
Frontier Exchange Economy of the Lower Mississippi Valley in the
Eighteenth
Century"
Jeremy Adelman
and Stephen Aron, “From
Borderlands to Borders”
Michael Adas, "From
Settler Colony to Global Hegemon"
Feb. 14: James Brooks, Captives and Cousins, 1-368
Andrés Reséndez, "An Expedition and Its Many
Tales," Continental
Crossroads, 121-150
Raúl
Ramos, "Finding the Balance: Bexar in Mexican/Indian Relations," Continental
Crossroads, 35-66
March 7: Susan Johnson, Roaring Camp, 25-344
Louise Pubols, "Fathers of the
Preliminary
Proposal for Final Paper Due
March 14: Beth LaDow, The
Medicine Line,
xi-218
Andrew Graybill, "Texas
Rangers, Canadian Mounties, and the Policing of the Transnational
Industrial
Frontier"
March 21: Gunther Peck, Reinventing
Free Labor, 1-236
First
Paper Due on or Before March 21
Sarah Griffith, "Border
Crossings:
Race, Class, and Smuggling in Pacific Coast Chinese Immigrant Society"
Of
April
11:
Elliott Young, Catarino
Garza’s Revolution On The Texas-Mexico Border
April 18: Neil Foley, White Scourge, 1-213
Peter Kolchin,
“Whiteness
Studies: The New History of Race in America”
Karl Jacoby,
"Between North and South," Continental Crossroads, 209-240
April
25:
Linda Gordon, Great Arizona Orphan Abduction,
Katherine
Benton-Cohen, "Docile
Children and Dangerous Revolutionaries"
May 2:
George Sánchez, Becoming
Mexican American, 3-274
Alex
Stern, "Nationalism on the Line," Continental Crossroads, 299-323.
A PRELIMINARY GUIDE TO USEFUL
SOURCES FOR FURTHER STUDY OF WESTERN/BORDERLANDS
HISTORY
PRINTED
MATERIALS:
JOURNALS
AT BROWN UNIVERSITY'S ROCKEFELLER LIBRARY
Western
Historical Quarterly
Western Humanities Review
Pacific Historical Review
New
Mexican Studies: Estudios Mexicanos
Latino Studies
Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies
Historia Mexicana
Hispanic American History Review
El Palacio
Kiva
Journal of American Ethnic History
Journal of the Southwest
Journal of
Utah Historical Quarterly
Oregon Historical Quarterly
Southern California Quarterly
American Indian Quarterly
American Indian Culture and Research Journal
Environmental History
Environment and History
REFERENCE
WORKS
Howard
Lamar, The New Encyclopedia
of the American West (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
David
Weber, The Spanish Frontier
in
Richard
White, 'It's
Your Misfortune and None of My Own': A New History of the
American West
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).
Robert V.Hine and John Mack Faragher,
The American West: A New Interpretive
History (
BIBLIOGRAPHIES
The
Trans-Mississippi West, 1804-1912: A Guide to Records in the National Archives
(
Jacqueline
J. Etulian, Mexican Americans in
the Twentieth-Century
West: A Bibliography (Albuquerque: Center for American West, 1990).
N. Jill
Howard and
Jennifer Ann Clark, Asians in the American West: Selective
Bibliography (Albuquerque: Center for American West, 1996).
Thomas Jaehn, The
Environment in the Twentieth-Century American West: A
Bibliography
(Albuquerque: Center for the American West, 1990).
WEB
RESOURCES
Stanford
University’s Collection of Dime Novels
Literary History of the
American West
Library of Congress: American Memory Collections
Library
of
Congress Exhibit: South Texas Border
Library of Congress Exhibit: The Chinese in California, 1850-1925
Library of Congress Exhibit: First-Person Narratives of California's Early Years
Library
of
Congress Exhibit: Russian and American Frontiers
Library
of
Congress Exhibit: American Indians of Northwest
Library
of
Congress Exhibit: Edward Curtis's Photographs of American Indians
Library
of
Congress Exhibit: Overland Diaries
Library of
Congress
Exhibit: Ansel Adam's Photographs of
Japanese
Internment at Manzanar
New York Public Library Exhibit: Mapping and Touring the West
Federal Records through the
General
Printing Office
National Library of Canada’s
Collection
of Exploration Texts
PBS Documentary on Spanish
Colonialism
PBS Documentary on the
American West
USC Archive on
Los
Angeles, Past, Present, and Future
University of Wisconsin Archive of Wisconsin Pioneers
19th Century Bibliographical Masterfile
California Heritage
Collection
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