The American Experience--The American Frontier

This seminar is an examination of the American Experience and an introduction to the Social Sciences (including History, Anthropology, and Sociology). Students will read and discuss several key primary documents regarding the idea of the Frontier in American history. Throughout American history, Americans have alternately struggled with and embraced the concept of the "frontier" in order to make sense of their experience in North America. This course will examine the American experience through historical and cultural ideas about the Frontier.

Organizing Concepts of the Course:

The Frontier--both the shifting places defined as the frontier and changing concepts of the frontier--has come to define for subsequent generations of Americans who "we" are and who is "over there" on the other side.

From the beginnings of Puritan settlement, English settlers established the "pale," a line which divided their own communities from what was "beyond the pale"--a nature which may have been the province of evil as well as Native populations who were thought of and dealt with in a variety of ways. The theme of the captivity narrative which plays out in early New England writing indicates the tensions over this definition of the frontier as something which both defined and threatened the community.

The frontier as place and as process emerges as powerful themes in American culture long after; think, for example, of Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans, the Western dime novel, Twain's Roughing It, Henry Nash Smith's The Virgin Land, or Teddy Roosevelt's memoirs of life as a cowboy. By the end of the nineteenth century, Frederick Jackson Turner's delineation of the Frontier Thesis provided a definition of what made Americans "American." Turner argued that encounters with wilderness on the frontier--and its human analogies, Native Americans--transformed Europeans into Americans. Not surprisingly, this definition of "American exceptionalism" emerged in other forms, through Western films, cowboy culture, and even in the Space Race and in American foreign policy.

Within debates over the Frontier run parallel debates about the emergence of American individualism; the lone cowboy, silhouetted against a Western sky, is the most common symbol of American self-reliance and self-definition. The American search for self led to the exploration of other "frontiers" which could not be confused with the West as a place. The struggle of the writers of the American Renaissance, the search for social justice in the face of the Great Depression, the psychotropic and psychedelic experimentation of the 1960s, and the efforts of Native Americans to maintain tribal identities reflect these forces at work in American culture.

More recently there has been a pointed examination of the impact on American life of the Frontier idea. This has especially focused on Turner's thesis, whose delineation of the frontier as a "line between civilization and savagery" is certainly problematic in a pluralistic society made up of people from both sides of that "line." The course will end with an examination of the challenges of the idea of a Frontier in American experience.

Course Requirements:

All students are required to attend class meetings and take part actively in class discussions. Written work will require students to synthesize readings, lectures, and discussions. Seminar participants must also read and assimilate assigned readings, and be prepared to discuss the readings on the schedule listed below. Students will submit all assignments on time; late assignments will only be accepted by prior arrangement with the professor.

A Note About Academic Integrity: Integrity is fundamental to the academic enterprise. It is violated by acts such as borrowing or purchasing term papers, essays, reports, and other written assignments; using concealed notes or crib sheets during examinations; copying others' work and submitting it as one's own; and misappropriating the knowledge of others. The sources from which one derives one's ideas, statements, terms, and data must be fully and specifically acknowledged in the appropriate form; failure to do so, intentionally or unintentionally, constitutes plagiarism. Violations of academic integrity may result in failure in the course and in disciplinary actions with penalties such as suspension or dismissal from the College.

Contacting the Professor:

My office is in 2N 203, and my office phone is 718-982-2869; I have office hours Tuesdays from 1:30 to 3:30, Wednesdays from 9:00 to 10:00, and by appointment. You may also reach me via email at lavender@postbox.csi.cuny.edu.

Assignments:

Ten Short (2-4 pp.) Writing Projects: 5% each of final grade (50% total)
Two Longer (5-7 pp.) Writing Assignments (Midterm/Final): 15% each of final grade (30% total)
Participation in Class Discussions: 20% of final grade

Required Texts (starred * items for purchase at College bookstore):

    *John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive (New York: Random House, 1995)
    *Frank Bergon, ed., The Journals of Lewis and Clark (New York: Viking Penguin, 1989)
    *Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian (New York: Viking Penguin, 1992)
    *Mary Austin, Land of Little Rain (New York: Dover Thrift, 1996)
    *John Steinbeck, The Harvest Gypsies (San Francisco: Heydey Books, 1988)
    *Ruth Underhill, Papago Woman (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1979)
    *Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (New York: Bantam, 1983)
    Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History"
    Hine & Bingham, The American Frontier (selections)
    Henry David Thoreau, Walden (selections)
    John Ford, The Grapes of Wrath (film)
    John Ford, The Searchers (film)
    Johnathan Wacks, Powwow Highway (film)

Course Schedule:

Week One: Introduction to the Frontier
	Monday, August 31	What is History? What is the Frontier?
	Wednesday, September 2	Where Is the Frontier?: A Landscape History of the Frontier
	Readings: Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History"; "New Spain," "New France," and "The English" from Hine & Bingham, The American Frontier.

Week Two: Comparative American Frontiers
	Monday, September 7	CSI Closed--No Classes
	Wednesday, September 9	Comparative Frontiers--French, Spanish, Russian, and English; Exercise One (Hine & Bingham) Due.
	Readings: Demos, The Unredeemed Captive

Week Three: Spain in the New World
	Monday, September 14	Comparative Frontiers, cont.
	Wednesday, September 16	Class Meets at Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manhattan (Meet at 12:15 at the Post Office window inside the St. George Ferry Terminal; take the 12:30 Ferry to Manhattan)
	Readings: Demos, The Unredeemed Captive

Week Four: Encounters
	Monday, September 21	CSI Closed--No Classes
	Wednesday, September 23	Discussion of Demos, The Unredeemed Captive (Classes follow Monday schedule); Exercise Two (Demos) Due.
	Readings: Bergon, ed., The Journals of Lewis and Clark

Week Five: Expansion
	Monday, September 28	Lewis and Clark (Computer Lab); Exercise Three (Lewis & Clark) Due.
	Wednesday, September 30	CSI Closed--No Classes
	Readings: Selections from Thoreau, Walden

Week Six: American Renaissance
	Monday, October 5	Discuss Thoreau; Exercise Four (Thoreau) Due.
	Wednesday, October 7	The American Renaissance Looks Westward
	Readings: Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian

Week Seven: Post-Civil War Journeys
	Monday, October 12	CSI Closed--No Classes
	Wednesday, October 14	Discuss Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian; Exercise Five (Stegner) Due.
	Readings: Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History"

Week Eight: Turning Points
	Monday, October 19	The Frontier and American Character Before the Dawes Act
	Wednesday, October 21	Varieties of Native American Experience; Midterm Papers Due
	Readings: Austin, Land of Little Rain

Week Nine: New Centuries and Centuries of Dishonor
	Monday, October 26	Native Americans in the Nineteenth Century
	Wednesday, October 28	Class Meets at National Museum of the American Indian, Manhattan
	Readings: Austin, Land of Little Rain

Week Ten: The "End" of the Frontier
	Monday, November 2	Turner in Context
	Wednesday, November 4	Discuss Austin, Land of Little Rain; Exercise Six (Austin) Due.
	Readings: Underhill, Papago Woman

Week Eleven: The Frontier as American Salvation
	Monday, November 9	Discuss Underhill, Papago Woman; Exercise Seven (Underhill) Due.
	Wednesday, November 11	Architectural Walking Tour of Manhattan
	Readings: Steinbeck, The Harvest Gypsies; View Ford, The Grapes of Wrath

Week Twelve: Dust Bowl Regionalism
	Monday, November 16	Discuss Steinbeck, The Harvest Gypsies, and Ford, The Grapes of Wrath; Exercise Eight (Steinbeck/Ford) Due.
	Wednesday, November 18	"Frontier" Versus "West"
	Readings: Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Week Thirteen: "New Frontiers"
	Monday, November 23	Cold War Frontier
	Wednesday, November 25	View The Right Stuff
	Readings: Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Week Fourteen: Inner Frontiers
	Monday, November 30	Discuss Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test; Exercise Nine (Wolfe) Due.
	Wednesday, December 2	Myths and Symbols of the Frontier

Week Fifteen: The Mythic West
	Monday, December 7	View Ford, The Searchers
	Wednesday, December 9	Discuss Ford, The Searchers

Week Fifteen: Who is "Civilized," Who is "Savage"?
	Monday, December 14	View Wacks, Powwow Highway; Exercise Ten (Outline) Due.
	Wednesday, December 16	Discuss Wacks, Powwow Highway

Finals Week: Final Papers Due
	Friday, December 18	Final Paper Due

University of Virginia Library Exhibit: Exploring the West From Monticello: A Perspective in Maps from Columbus to Lewis & Clark