HIST 161 - Violent Economies: Rewriting the American West

1 unit(s)

This course considers themes in the history of the United States and its trans-Mississippi frontiers. Among these are resource exploitation and cycles of boom and bust; violence and accompanying ideologies of race, class, gender, religious faith, and property rights; dispossession of native peoples and their survival, resistance, and resilience; and the emergence of an ethos of environmental conservation. To examine these issues, we investigate histories of the West from the California Gold Rush through twentieth-century dam-building and firefighting. Along the way, we compare these to other kinds of storytelling, including eyewitness accounts, fiction, and mythmaking.

Open only to first-year students; satisfies college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.

Three 50-minute periods.

Not offered in 2024/25.

Course Format: CLS