Readings

On this page, you will find many of the course readings organized for your convenience. I will post them in the order in which they will appear in the course sequence. Please note that I have provided the full bibliographic citation for you because many of you will draw from these readings for the writing assignments. Don't forget: there are important formatting difference between bibliographic and footnote citations.

Unit 1: Early Indigenous West

• Moodie, D. Wayne, A.J.W. Catchpole, and Kerry Abel. "Northern Athapaskan Oral Traditions and the White River Volcano." Ethnohistory 39, no. 2 (Spring 1992): 148-171, https://doi.org/10.2307/482391. [Link to article can be found here Links to an external site..] - Note: we used this in class 1/10.
• Andrews, Thomas and Flannery Burke. "What Does It Mean to Think Historically?" Perspectives 45, no. 1 (January 2007), https://www.historians.org/research-and-publications/perspectives-on-history/january-2007/what-does-it-mean-to-think-historically Links to an external site.. Note: we used this in class 1/12, and this is critical for the Short Writing Exercise.

Unit 3: Ambiguous West

• Turner, Frederick J. "The Significance of the Frontier in American History (1893)." https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/historical-archives/the-significance-of-the-frontier-in-american-history. [If you need a print version, here is a PDF of Turner's essay Download PDF of Turner's essay -- the citation is the same.]

Unit 4: U.S. West

• Barth, Gunther, ed. The Lewis and Clark Expedition: Selections from the Journals Arranged by Topic. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1998. [Note: you are reading excerpts Download excerpts from an edited volume of primary documents related to the Lewis and Clark expedition.]
• Chávez, Ernesto, ed. The U.S. War with Mexico Download The U.S. War with Mexico: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. [Note: I assigned groups and sets of documents in class on Feb. 27. Set 1 (Manifest Destiny: 1, 20, & 53); Set 2 (Views on War w/ Mexico: 23, 25, & 27); Set 3 (Aftermath of US-Mexico War: 44 & 50); Set 4 (TX Independence: 12, 13, & 14); and Set 5 (Views of Each Other: 10 & 39)].
• Clappe, Louise Amelia Knapp Smith. The Shirley Letters: Being Letters Written in 1851-1852 from the California Mines. Santa Barbara: Peregrine Publishers, 1970. [excerpts Download excerpts]