History 4120    Twentieth Century West    MacKay       

Weeks 3-5    Creating the West

Reading:  Nash, Creating the West: Historical Interpretations 1890-1990
            January 26: Introduction, I
                            January 28: II
                            January 30: III

February 4: III

February 9: IV
February 11: V
February 13: conclusion

    Let's take a break from reading Nash and read an essay by Bernard DeVoto "The Plundered Province." Respond to the text in your journal--come to class on February 2 prepared to comment. Bernard DeVoto (1897-1955), winner of the Pulitzer Prize, was a renowned scholar-historian of the American West and one of the country's greatest men of letters.

Further information about DeVoto: http://www2.tcu.edu/depts/prs/amwest/html/wl0899.html

A 1996 article in Sunset about DeVoto: http://www.findarticles.com/m1216/n4_v196/18285068/p1/article.jhtml 

Also--the article summarizing Webb's Great Plains thesis:  http://www2.austincc.edu/lpatrick/his1302/webb.html

For a power point presentation of Webb's thesis: http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/instruct/isern/431/webbthesis_files/frame.htm

Journal topics: respond to the sections of the text. Focus on how Nash is helping you understand how historians have interpreted the significance of the American West in different ways--asking different questions, considering different experiences and perspectives. Respond to the DeVoto article. Respond to the summary of Webb's Great Plains thesis.

And the scholar who created the "meta thesis" about the West:

Frederick Jackson Turner's "Significance of the Frontier in American History" (1893): http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1893turner.html

book length version: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/TURNER/

"An Annotated Bibliography of the American Frontier" by Laurie Kovacovic: http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/tbacig/urop/bibtrner.html

Also see the list of study questions Catherine Lavender has posted about Turner's Thesis: http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/frontier.html

Noted scholars of the West

John Wesley Powell

Carey McWilliams

Walter Prescott Webb

Carl O. Sauer

Herbert Bolton

William Gilpin

Earl Pomeroy

Emerson Hough

Bernard De Voto

Henry Nash Smith

Richard Etulain

Richard Slotkin

Patricia Nelson Limerick

Donald Worcester

Richard White

Glenda Riley

Quintin Taylor

Geoffery Ward