COMPARING FRONTIERS
HIST 5605/HIST 5650, Spring 2005
Instructors: Kristine T. Utterback Office: History 258. Phone: 766-6259 Office Hours: M, 2-3; W, 2-4, or by appointment
Phil Roberts Office: History 356. Phone: 766-5311 Office Hours: M-W, 10-11:30, and by appointment
Messages: 766-5101 (main office and voice mail)
E-mail: Dr. Utterback:
Dr. Roberts
Course Objectives and Procedures: This course uses a comparative approach to the concept of “frontier” and how historians have applied the various concepts throughout history and in different cultures and time periods. Students either will be registered for the Medieval Europe number or the American West number, but there will be essentially little difference in expectations, readings, and assignments. Readings for this class will be extensive and range widely in geography and time, but they will not be difficult. Students are expected to have read the assigned materials before the due dates noted on the syllabus. Because class participation is an important component of this class, keeping up with the readings is essential. Further, participation is not possible if a student does not attend. Consequently, relentless attendance is expected.
Required Texts:
Robert Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950-1350.
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
James H. Merrill, Into the American Woods: Negotiations on the Pennsylvania Frontier. (New York: Norton, 1999).
David J. Weber and Jane M. Rausch, ed. Where Cultures Meet: Frontiers in Latin American History.
(Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1994).
Other assignments will be handed out in class as photocopied articles or placed on reserve at Coe Library.
Formal Paper/Presentation (60 percent): The primary product from the course will be a presentation, done during the last weeks of the class, based on an approved topic, and a final formal paper based on the presentation. The paper and presentation (and accompanying materials, including an outline and annotated bibliography) will count for 60 percent of the grade. Students will be required to submit three copies of the accompanying materials and the final paper. Presentations, based on research, will be made in class beginning on April 21. Topics will be discussed in class and final selection for the topic will be made on Feb. 24. Each presenter will be responsible for seeing that each student in the class receives a copy of the outline and annotated bibliography on the Monday before the presentation is to be made. Following (constructive) class critiques of the presentation, most students will have time to prepare the final, formal document. The final paper, due no later than the last day of the semester (May 5), should conform to a recognized style, preferably Chicago Manual of Style or a recognized alternative. Deadlines are important; therefore, no late papers will be accepted.
Critique/Commentary (20 percent): Each presenter will also serve as a “commentator” during the final weeks. The commentator will lead the [constructive] discussion about the presentation. He/she will be responsible for checking the annotated bibliography and, if necessary, suggesting additional sources. All students will be expected to have read and critiqued each presenter’s outline/annotated bibliography before the night of his/her presentation. Each will provide the presenter with constructive suggestions which may take the form of a brief written report or legible suggestions written on the outline/annotated bibliography. In either case, they must be returned to the presenter on the evening of her/his presentation. The commentator will provide copies of written comments to the presenter and to the two instructors on the day of the commentary on which a substantial portion of the 20 percent commentary grade will be based.
Class Participation (20 percent): Constructive participation is expected in a graduate-level course. Students are reminded that one component of participation is collegiality and rude behavior toward colleagues in the class will not be tolerated.
Outline of Topics, Meetings and Assignments
*Assignment is due on the listed date.
January 13 – Introduction
January 20 – Defining the Frontier
Bartlett, Chapter 1
Turner Essay, Weber, pp. 1-18.
Sarmiento, “Frontier Barbarism”, Weber, pp. 26-32.
William Cronon,”Turner’s First Stand: The Significance of Significance in American History,”in Richard Etulain, Writing Western History. (Reno: Univ. of Nevada Press, 2002), pp. 73-101.
January 27 – Frontier Expansion: Westward/Eastward, the Course of Empire
Bartlett, Chapter 2
Webb, “The Great Frontier”, Weber, pp. 51-63.
McNeill, “The Great Frontier: Freedom and Hierarchy”, Weber, pp. 64-71.
Merrill, James H. Into the American Woods: Negotiations on the Pennsylvania Frontier. (New York: Norton, 1999). (all)
February 3 – Frontier Armies: Conquest and Frontiers
Bartlett, Chapter 3
DeArmond, “Frontier Warfare in Colonial Chile”, Weber, pp. 115-122.
Gump, James O., “Civil Wars in South Dakota and South Africa: The Role of the ‘Third Force,’” Western Historical Quarterly 34 (Winter 2003), pp. 427-444.
February 10 – Immigrants in the New Landscape
Bartlett, Chapters 5 and 6
Nugent, “New World Frontiers,” Weber, pp. 72-85.
February 17 – Colonial Towns and Colonial Traders
Bartlett, Chapter 7.
Alida Metcalf, “Family, Frontiers and a Brazilian Community,” Weber, pp. 130-139.
Abbott, “The American West and the Three Urban Revolutions”
February 24 – Legal Systems on the Frontier
R. C. MacLeod, “Law and Order on the Western-Canadian Frontier, ” in John McLaren, Hamar Foster and Chet Orloff, Law for the Elephant, Law for the Beaver: Essays in the Legal History of the North American West. (Pasadena: 9th Judicial Circuit Historical Society, 1992), pp. 90-105.
John H. Wunder, “What’s Old about the New Western History: Law, Part III,” Western Legal History 10 (1997), pp. 85-116.
TERM PAPER TOPICS DUE TODAY
March 3 – The Knight, the Cowboy and the Gaucho
Slatta, “The Gaucho in Argentina’s Quest for National Identity,” Weber, pp. 151-164.
Hollister & Bennett, “Conquests, Crusades and Persecutions”
March 10 – Race Relations on the Frontier and the “Middle Ground”
Bartlett, Chapters 8 and 9
David G. Gutierrez, “Significant to Whom?: Mexican Americans and the History of the American
West,” Western Historical Quarterly 24 (November 1993), pp. 519-539.
Quintard Taylor, Blacks and Asians in a White City: Japanese Americans and African Americans in Seattle, 1890-1940,” Western Historical Quarterly 22 (November 1991), pp. 401-430.
Franklin W. Knight, “”Black Transfrontiersmen’: The Caribbean Maroons,” Weber, pp. 123-129.
John Mack Faragher, “Americans, Mexicans, Metis: A Community Approach to the Comparative Study of North American Frontiers,” in William Cronon, George Miles, Jay Gitlin. Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America’s Western Past. (New York: Norton, 1992), pp. 90-109.
LeRoy Ladurie, Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error, pp. 89 – 119
March 17 – SPRING BREAK
March 24 – Religion and Frontiers
Bartlett, Chapter 10.
David G. Sweet, “Reflections on the Ibero-American…” Weber, pp. 87-98.
Talbot, My People of the Plains excerpt
March 31 – Women and Children on the Frontier
John H. Wunder, “What’s Old about the New Western History: Race and Gender, Part 1,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 85 (April 1994), pp. 50-58.
Dillard, “Daughters of the Reconquest”
Debra McDonald, “To Be Black and Female in the Spanish Southwest,” in Quintard Taylor and Shirley Ann Wilson Moore, African American Women Confront the West, 1600-2000. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), pp. 31-52.
April 7 – Comparing Worldwide Frontiers
Mark von Hagen, “Empires, Borderlands, and Diasporas: Eurasia as Anti-Paradigm for the Post-Soviet Era,” American Historical Review 109 (April 2004), pp. 445-468.
Glenda Riley, Taking Land, Breaking Land: Women Colonizing the American West and Kenya, 1840-1940. (Albuquerque: UNM Press, 2003). Selected chapters.
Roberts, “Petroleum Frontiers of the American Rockies and the Arab Middle East.”
April 14 – The Mythical Frontier
Louis S. Warren, “Buffalo Bill Meets Dracula: William F. Cody, Bram Stoker, and the Frontiers of Racial Decay,” American Historical Review 107 (October 2002), pp. 1124-1157.
PROJECT OUTLINES/ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHIES DUE!
April 21 – Final Presentations (1-3)
COMMENTARIES DUE!
April 28 – Final Presentations (4-7)
May 5 – Finals Week – Final Presentation (8-10), if necessary
Syllabus