HIST 4260 - [The West and Beyond: Frontiers and Borders in American History and Culture]

(crosslisted)
(also AMST 4260) (HA-AS)

Fall. 4 credits.

Next offered 2013-2014. Priority given to junior and senior majors in History and American Studies.

A. Sachs.

“Eastward I go only by force,” said Henry David Thoreau, “but westward I go free.” This seminar explores the many meanings of the West-as a place, as a process, and especially as a borderground-in U.S. history. The Civil War was fought between North and South, but in many ways these two regions were disputing the fate of the West. Indeed, some historians have argued that there is nothing more significant than the idea of the frontier in American history. But did the “westering” movement represent a heroic accomplishment or a tragic act of violent appropriation? What is covered up by the very idea of something called a West, with all its mythic connotations? We’ll attempt to address these and other questions as we wander along various fault lines in time and space, analyzing American frontiers from the era of the Indian Wars in the Massachusetts Bay Colony to the era of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s governorship.