History 3547        

Mixed Raced Peoples Borderlands History:  Race and Gender on the US-Mexico and US-Canadian Borders

Course Description

This course will focus on both the US-Mexico and US-Canadian borders from a comparative historical viewpoint. While considering experiences on both borders, we will study the border through the lenses of race and gender,. Moreover, we will look at a few facets of racial and cultural mixture, with an emphasis on the interactions between French, Spanish, Creole, African, free, enslaved, Metis, Mestizo, and Native peoples in the southern and northern borderlands. Although groups such as Metis, Creole, and Mestizo are resultant of ethnogenesis, each group has highly variable histories.  Divided into four parts, the first section will cover concepts and theories, basic historiography of Borderlands, and race and gender.  We will survey history from the early 17^th to the mid19th centuires.  We will also consider the related themes of slavery, identity, and class.  We will seek to answer the following questions:  How have these different peoples negotiated the border landscape under the forces of colonization?  To what extent did these peoples affect the political, economic, and social structure under empire?  At points of contact, how did these mixed identities evolve?

Course Objectives:

• We will consider historical meaning and interpretation through the evaluation of both primary and secondary sources.
• We will exercise our ability to understand what is historically significant.
• We will think about and develop empathy for historical actors
• As we think about the concepts of continuity and change through the process of chronological thinking and narrative.
• We will think about the process of progress and the relationship to empathy and teleology.
• We will concentrate on the following important turning points
  • French, Spanish, British conquest and Early settlement
  • French and Indian War 1763
  • American Revolution 1776
  • The Frontier
  • The US-Canadian Border
  • Purchas of the Louisiana Territory 1803
  • War of 1812
  • Mexican Independence 1821
  • US-Mexican War 1848
  • Gadsden Purchase 1854
  • United States Civil War 1865

Outcomes

• By the end of the course the student will be able to:
• Actively read and extract important information from a text.
• Know the debates about the significant turning points.

Required readings

Books:

• Storey, William Kelleher. Writing History: A Guide for Students. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
• Bean, John C., Virginia A. Chappell, and Alice M. Gillam. Reading Rhetorically. New York: Pearson Education Canada, 2010.

Special Reader:           

The special reader will contain excerpts from various secondary and primary sources.

• Brown, Jennifer S. H. “Diverging Identities: The Presbyterian métis of St. Gabriel Street, Montreal.” In The New Peoples: Being and Becoming Metis in North America. Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1985.
• Brown, Jennifer S. H.. “The Metis: Genesis and Rebirth.” In Native people, native lands: Canadian Indians, Inuit and Métis, n.d. Barr, Juliana. “Beyond Their Control: Spaniards in Native Texas.” In Choice, Persuasion, and Coercion: Social Control on Spain’s North American Frontiers. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005.
• Bitterli, Urs, and Ritchie Robertson. Cultures in Conflict: Encounters Between European and Non-European Cultures, 1492-1800. Stanford University Press, 1993.
• Peterson, Jacqueline, and Jennifer S. H. Brown. The New Peoples: Being and Becoming Métis in North America. Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001.
  • Brown, Jennifer S. H. “Diverging Identities: The Presbyterian métis of St. Gabriel Street, Montreal.” In The New Peoples: Being and Becoming Metis in North America. Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1985.
  • Burton, H. Sophie, and F. Todd Smith. Colonial Natchitoches : a Creole community on the Louisiana-Texas frontier. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2008.
  • Din, Gilbert C., and John E. Harkins. The New Orleans Cabildo : colonial Louisiana’s first city government, 1769-1803. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996.
  • DuVal, Kathleen. “Indian Intermarriage and Métissage in Colonial Louisiana.” The William and Mary Quarterly 65, no. 2. Third (April 2008): 267-304.
  • Fabregat, Claudio Esteva. Mestizaje in Ibero-America. University of Arizona Press, 1995.
  • Griffiths, Naomi Elizabeth Saundaus. From migrant to Acadian: a North American border people, 1604-1755. McGill-Queen’s Press – MQUP, 2005.
  • Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo. Africans in colonial Louisiana : the development of Afro-Creole culture in the eighteenth century. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992.
  • Johnson, Jerah. “Colonial New Orleans: a Fragment of the Eighteenth-Centry French Ethos.” In Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992.
  • Kirk, Sylvia Van. Many tender ties: women in fur-trade society, 1670-1870. University of Oklahoma Press, 1983.
  • Lockhart, James. The Nahuas after the conquest: a social and cultural history of the Indians of central Mexico, sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Stanford University Press, 1992.
  • Martínez, María Elena. Genealogical fictions: limpieza de sangre, religion, and gender in colonial Mexico. Stanford University Press, 2008.
  • Mora, Anthony P. Border dilemmas : racial and national uncertainties in New Mexico, 1848-1912. Durham N.C.: Duke University Press, 2011. http://www.library.arizona.edu/applications/couttspda/?isbn=0822347970
  • Murphy, Lucy Eldersveld. A Gathering of Rivers: Indians, Métis, and Mining in the Western Great Lakes, 1737-1832. U of Nebraska Press, 2004.
  • Tregle Jr., Joseph. “Creoles and Americans.” In Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992.
  • Vergès, Françoise. Monsters and revolutionaries: colonial family romance and métissage. Duke University Press, 1999

Assignments

Exams:

The students will have 3 exams consisting of 5 multiple choice questions and one essay question.  These exams will assess superficial knowledge or textbook knowledge.  Students will be given essay question prior to the exam to prepare.

Group discussions:           

The students will be placed in groups of my choice.  This is where we will learn how to “think historically.”   Using the special reader, students will read or re-read the primary sources such a letters, newspapers, speeches, and photographs and based on several questions I have proposed, given at the beginning of class.  Students will read assigned readings for that day we are doing group discussions.  While collectively the students will answer the questions, each student will have to answer a question on their own.   Students will receive participation points for being present and group responses.

Paper:

Final paper will be a historiographical essay.  Based on readings, discussions, and comprehension, I want students to position themselves within the scholarly debate.

Weekly Reading:

            Reading assignments from the special reader   are imperative that you actually read them.

Weekly Assessments:

Weekly assignments will assess your comprehension of ongoing debates about the specific turning points we will discuss in class.  These assessments will be in the form of one-minute paper.

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4 –Concepts and Theories

Week 5—Concepts and Theories

Week 6—Metis

Week 7—Metis

Week 8—Metis

Week 9—Metis  

Week 10—Creole

Week 11—Creole

Week 12—Creole

Week 13—Mestizo

Week 14—Mestizo

History 1301        

United States History to 1865

Course Description

Although this course is a survey of the United States, it resists traditional approaches to the study of US history up to 1865.  This course will center significant turning points that relate to bordered regions, which will allow us to traverse local, regional, national, and international boundaries.  This North American context will use race, gender, and empire as its analytical lenses.  Through a wide range of readings, this course will highlight how peoples such as Canary Islanders, Acadians, Africans, free people of color, Mestizo, Native Americans, Mexicans, Metis, and Creoles who wrestled with imperial authorities over material and political resources. We will also consider the related themes of slavery, identity, and class.  We will seek to answer the following questions:  How have these different peoples negotiated the border landscape under the forces of colonization?  To what extent did these peoples affect the political, economic, and social structure under empire?  At points of contact, how did these mixed identities evolve?

Course Objectives:

• We will consider historical meaning and interpretation through the evaluation of both primary and secondary sources.
• We will exercise our ability to understand what is historically significant.
• We will think about and develop empathy for historical actors
• As we think about the concepts of continuity and change through the process of chronological thinking and narrative.
• We will think about the process of progress and the relationship to empathy and teleology.

• We will concentrate on the following important turning points
  • French, Spanish, British conquest and Early settlement
  • French and Indian War 1763
  • American Revolution 1776
  • The Frontier
  • The US-Canadian Border
  • Purchas of the Louisiana Territory 1803
  • War of 1812
  • Mexican Independence 1821
  • US-Mexican War 1848
  • Gadsden Purchase 1854
  • United States Civil War 1865

Outcomes

• By the end of the course the student will be able to:
• Actively read and extract important information from a text.
• Know the debates about the significant turning points.

Required readings

Textbooks:

• A People’s History of the United States, 1942-Present by Howard Zinn
• American History: a Survey Volume 1 by Alan Brinkley

Books:

• Storey, William Kelleher. Writing History: A Guide for Students. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
• Bean, John C., Virginia A. Chappell, and Alice M. Gillam. Reading Rhetorically. New York: Pearson Education Canada, 2010.

Special Reader:           

The special reader will contain excerpts from various secondary and primary sources.

• James Axtell, Natives and Newcomers: The Cultural Origins of North America (Oxford University Press, 2001)
• Jesus F. de la Teja, Choice, Persuasion, and Coercion: Social Control on Spain’s North American Frontiers (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005)
• Carl A. Brasseaux, The Founding of New Acadia: The Beginnings of Acadian Life in Louisiana, 1765-1803 (LSU Press, 1997).
• David J. Weber, “The Spanish Borderlands of North America: A Historiography,” OAH Magazine of History 14, no. 4 (2000): 5–11;
• David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).
• Chavez, Thomas E., and Thomas E. Chávez. Spain and the Independence of the United States: An Intrinsic Gift. Albuquerque University of New Mexico Press: UNM Press, 2004.
• Sleeper-Smith, Susan. Indian Women and French Men: Rethinking Cultural Encounter in the Western Great Lakes. Univ of Massachusetts Press, 2001.
• Cayton, Andrew Robert Lee, Fredrika J. Teute, and Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture. Contact Points: American Frontiers from the Mohawk Valley to the Mississippi, 1750-1830. Chapel Hill: UNC Press Books, 1998.
• Carroll, Francis M. A Good and Wise Measure: The Search for the Canadian-American Boundary, 1783-1842. 1st ed. University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division, 2001.
• Brasseaux, Carl A. Acadian to Cajun: Transformation of a People, 1803-1877. Jackson: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1992.
• Hickey, Donald R. The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict. University of Illinois Press, 2012.
• Grimsley, Mark. The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861-1865. Cambridge University Press, 1997.
• Haycox, Stephen. Alaska: An American Colony. University of Washington Press, 2006.
• White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
• Reséndez, Andrés. Changing National Identities at the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800-1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
• Mora, Anthony P. Border Dilemmas: Racial and National Uncertainties in New Mexico, 1848–1912. Chapel Hill: Duke University Press, 2011
• Johnson, Walter. Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001

Assignments

Exams:

The students will have 3 exams consisting of 5 multiple choice questions and one essay question.  These exams will assess superficial knowledge or textbook knowledge.  Students will be given essay question prior to the exam to prepare.

Group discussions:           

The students will be placed in groups of my choice.  This is where we will learn how to “think historically.”   Using the special reader, students will read or re-read the primary sources such a letters, newspapers, speeches, and photographs and based on several questions I have proposed, given at the beginning of class.  Students will read assigned readings for that day we are doing group discussions.  While collectively the students will answer the questions, each student will have to answer a question on their own.   Students will receive participation points for being present and group responses.

Paper:

Final paper will be a historiographical essay.  Based on our lectures, readings, and discussions, I want students to position themselves within the scholarly debate.

Weekly Reading:

            Reading assignments from the special reader are imperative that you actually read them.

Weekly Assessments:

Weekly assignments will assess your comprehension of ongoing debates about the specific turning points we will discuss in class.  These assessments will be in the form of one minute paper.

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4 –French, Spanish, British conquest and early settlement

Week 5—French and Indian War 1763

Week 6—American Revolution 1776

Week 7—The Frontier

Week 8—The Frontier

Week 9 Purchase of the Louisiana Territory 1803

Week 10—The War of 1812

Week 11—Mexican Independence 1821

Week 12—US and Canadian Border

Week 13—Gadsden Purchase 1854

Week 14—US Civil War 1865

Bender, Thomas, and American Historical Association. The Education of Historians  for the Twenty-First Century. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004.

Data collected and a report consolidated on the state of the profession.  The authors looked at several factors such as defining who are historians and what do they have to say, the needed conversations, and based on their analysis they came up with recommendations on several aspects of the history profession.  Lastly, they dedicate the final chapter for a look at graduate program circumstances.  This book is most useful when concerning myself with questions regarding the direction of the historical profession.      

Booth, Alan. Teaching History at University: Enhancing Learning and Understanding. London ; New York: Psychology Press, 2003.                           

This text focuses on improving the history-teaching environment for the learning student of history in higher education.  Reminds teachers of the cognitive components of history teaching and asks historians to walk in the shoes of their students.  Booth asks us to look to the ways that we approach facilitating historical knowledge in the classroom and to consider alternative practices, which is good when considering a teaching philosophy.  Next, Booth asks us to consider the learning environment and the acronym “responsive,” which reminds us of the certain characteristics of best environments.  The final chapters provide techniques in order to promote active and independent learning and the state of the field Teaching and Learning in higher education.  This book is most useful when considering the larger questions regarding teaching and learning.       

Graff, Gerald, and Cathy Birkenstein. “They Say/I Say”: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010.

This text simply “demystifies” the processes of writing in the academy.  Provides templates to the ways you would engage academic dialogue, a process that NO academic wants to share, well except some.  The authors ask their audience to empower themselves and take ownership of their writing.  The last four essays of the text are commentaries from various writers of different disciplinary backgrounds.  This book is most useful for contextualizing academic writing in a teeny tiny book that is cheap and super easy to read, which is perfect for me.    

Gurung, Regan A. R., and Beth M. Schwartz. Optimizing Teaching and Learning: Practicing Pedagogical Research. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons, 2012.

This text provides context to the scholarship on Teaching and Learning in higher education.  The introduction discusses the importance in pedagogical research.  The field says that in order for academics to be or to become proficient teachers we are to self and student assess.  This text is best for those teachers or professors who wish to become scholars in the field of teaching and learning; moreover, this text gives detailed assessments or scientific methodology to approach these goals.    

Lévesque, Stéphane. Thinking Historically: Educating Students for the Twenty-first Century. Toronto ; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2008.

Lévesque is concerned with the ways in which historians think, he does not just explore the numerous philosophies behind the way we think, but outlines the major aspects of historical thinking integral to our profession.  He applies those philosophies, which results in a framework history teachers can apply when structuring to their courses.  This book is best for me and those who wish to better understand the processes that occur when we actively are writing, teaching, researching the past.   

Luey, Beth. Handbook for Academic Authors. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

This text outlines the process of publishing.  She touches on the multiple ways to publish and places each process within the context of the publishing industry.  This book is a good choice for graduated student who have no idea of where to start and the revised edition incorporates the way in which to deal with the ins and outs of digital publishing. 

Svinicki, Marilla D., and Wilbert James McKeachie. McKeachie’s Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research, and Theory for College and University Teachers. Belmont, Calif.: Cengage Learning, 2010.

This book is the “textbook” for teaching and learning in higher education.  This text touches on every issue known the scholarly community regarding teaching and learning.  For example, the text begins with the debate concerned with the balance between teaching and research.  In the following chapters the text prepares you to construct your course, introduce reading as “active learning,” negotiating the landscape of interactive learning through discussion groups, and student perceptions.  Finally, the text closes by providing approaches to build on the skills you have learned earlier in the text.      

Discussion Questions

1. The Seven Years War marked a change in imperial power on the North American continent.  While it is important to include a cursory overview of the events that laid the foundation and the immediate and long-term effects of the French and Indian War, most importantly discuss the social and economic relationships (Native peoples and Europeans) that gave context to the conflict.
2. In the wake of the 1803 purchase of the Louisiana Territory, the United States constructed an image of exceptionalism and individualism best represented in Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis.  Although Turner argues that, the end of the frontier also marked one of the most important democratizing forces in American life, what assumptions did Turner make?  Discuss those who are absent from Turner’s interpretation of the past and their significance to history.

CATs

1. Give me a once sentence summary of Richard White’s “middle ground?”
2. Was David Weber a revisionist? What is a revisionist?

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