Unbordered and Bordered Lands: North American Borderlands History New York University Fall 2013 Wednesdays Professor

Rachel St. John stjohn@nyu.edu Office: KJCC 705 Office Hours: TBD Description: In this reading seminar, students will explore the major themes and historiographical approaches to the study of North American borderlands history. A rapidly expanding and vibrant field, borderlands history focuses on the interactions of peoples, nations, and empires across the boundaries of Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Beginning with the earliest European claims to the continent, this course will explore recent writings on the interactions of Europeans and Native peoples as Spain, Britain, and France attempted to conquer North America. In the second half of the class, we will turn to the transition from empires to nation-states in North America and explore how Mexico, the United States, and Canada worked to assert state power and create national space and citizens in the borderlands between nations. Course topics include: imperial claims and competition, Native peoples responses to conquest, state and nation-building, settlement and economic integration, and conflict and cooperation between different racial and ethnic groups. Course Requirements: Texts: James Brooks, Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands Chester Brown, Louis Real: A Comic Strip Biography Andrew Graybill, Policing the Great Plains: Rangers, Mounties, and the North American Frontier Pekka Hmlinen, The Comanche Empire Karl Jacoby, Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, The evening Redness in the West Andrs Resndez, A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca: The Extraordinary Tale of a Shipwrecked Spaniard Who Walked Across America in the Sixteenth Century Guy Vanderhaeghe, The Last Crossing Lissa Wadewitz, The Nature of Borders Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815

Participation: It is essential that you attend class and participate in class discussions. If you must miss class for any reason, you will need to contact me before class and complete a 3-5 page review of the weeks readings. Beyond just attending class, you need to actively participate. This means that you must have completed all of the weeks readings and be engaged in classroom discussion. Every students participation is essential to promoting a thoughtful, interesting, and useful discussion. While critical and possibly controversial perspectives are welcome, participants are expected to be respectful and open to others interpretations. Assignments: Weekly Web Postings: Before every class, you should submit a posting to the course website commenting on some aspect of the readings. These postings should be no longer than a paragraph. Some possible postings might include: A well thought-out question about the reading. You should include a sentence or two elaborating on why this is a significant question. A brief discussion of the how the reading compares to previous weeks discussions or readings. A passage from the reading that you find particularly important, confusing, or insightful. Include a sentence or two explaining why you chose this passage. A response to another students posting. Ideally, these postings will offer an opportunity to get conversations started before class. There are many other possibilities for postings. Their point is to get you thinking critically about the reading before arriving in class. These postings are not expected to be polished or brilliant, but should indicate that youve read and thought about the material. Postings should be sent to the class no later than 9 am each Tuesday morning before class, so that everyone will have an opportunity to look them over before class. Footnote Analysis Due Tuesday, September 24th by 5 pm After reading Juliana Barrs Geographies of Power and Michael Witgens The Rituals of Possession, go back and read their footnotes closely. Write a 1-2 page memo for each article in which you identify the types of sources they use and analyze how they use them. Are they primary or secondary sources? Who produced the sources? What perspectives do they provide? How do they use different kinds of sources to make different points? Do they closely analyze just one source or combine sources in making an argument? You may also include questions that you have about their use of sources.

Evaluating an Authors Use of a Source, 4-5 pages Due Tuesday, October 22nd by 5 pm For this assignment, you will write a 4-5 page paper in which you make an argument about how Karl Jacoby used specific primary sources in Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History. After reading Shadows at Dawn, explore Jacobys website-- http://www.brown.edu/Research/Aravaipa/. Using the document section of the website, browse the primary documents related to the history of the Camp Grant Massacre. Select one or two documents to read closely and locate the places in Shadows at Dawn where Jacoby cites them. How did Jacoby use the documents? What kind of information was he able to draw from them? How did he deal with the limitations and biases of the source? Did he provide a fair characterization of the source? In writing your paper make a clear argument about Jacobys use and interpretation of the source and provide specific examples from both Shadows at Dawn and the documents to support your interpretation. Also be sure to explain the document you selected and to contextualize it within Jacobys work. Book Review, 400 words Due Friday, November 15th by 5 pm Select one of the course texts that we will have read at this point and write a critical review. For preparation for this assignment you should consult the book reviews sections of the Journal of American History, the Hispanic American Historical Review, or the Canadian Journal of History. Using these reviews as a model, write a 400-word review of the book in which you summarize its approach and argument and critically evaluate its contribution to the field of North American borderlands history. Research Question & Annotated Bibliography Due Friday, November 22nd by 5 pm Having read widely in the field of North American Borderlands history, this assignment will be your chance to think about where the field might go in the future. Drawing on what youve read this semester, develop a succinct research question that you might like to pursue in a research paper (you will not be writing a full research paper, so this is hypothetical). You will then identify some of the sources that you would use to pursue this topic and write an annotated bibliography which provides all of the bibliographic information for each source and 3-5 sentences that describe its content and importance for your project. Be sure to include at least 5 secondary sources and 5 primary sources. More details about this assignment will be made available on the course website. Primary Source Analysis Due Wednesday, December 11th by 5 pm Using the university library or an on-line archive, you will select a primary source that is related to the research question you developed. Drawing on course materials and additional background research, you will write a 6-8 page paper in which you set a close reading of the source in historical context in order to develop an argument about the sources historical significance. More details about this assignment will be made available on the course website.

Evaluation: Class Participation 20% Online Web Postings 5% Footnote Analysis 10% Evaluating an Authors Use of a Source 15% Book Review 15% Research Question & Annotated Bibliography 15% Primary Source Analysis 20%

Schedule: September 4th: Introduction September 11th: Approaching the Borderlands Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History (please note that you only need to read the link to Chapter I on the website) David Weber, Turner, the Boltonians, and the Borderlands, The American Historical Review, Vol. 91, no.1 (February 1986): 66-81 Jeremy Adelman and Steve Aron, From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States, and the Peoples in between in North American History, The American Historical Review, 104:3 (June 1999): 814-841 Making Transnational History: Nations, Regions, and Borderlands, Introduction to Samuel Truett and Elliott Young, eds., Continental Crossroads: Remapping U.S.-Mexico Borderlands History The Homeland, Aztln, in Gloria Anzalda, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza Part I: Unbordered Lands September 18th: First Encounters Andrs Resndez, A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca: The Extraordinary Tale of a Shipwrecked Spaniard Who Walked Across America in the Sixteenth Century September 25th: Mapping Native North American Borderlands Juliana Barr, Geographies of Power: Mapping Indian Borders in the Borderlands of the Early Southwest," The William and Mary Quarterly: 68:1 (January 2011): 5-46 Michael Witgen, The Rituals of Possession: Native Identity and the Invention of Empire in Seventeenth-Century Western North America, Ethnohistory 54:4 (Fall 2007): 639-668 October 2nd: The Blood of Conquest Part I: Violence and Kinship Selections from James Brooks, Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands

Ned Blackhawk, The Displacement of Violence: Ute Diplomacy and the Making of New Mexico's Eighteenth-Century Northern Borderlands, Ethnohistory 54:4 (Fall 2007): 723-755.

October 9th: The Middle Ground Selections from Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 October 16th: Indigenous Empires Selections from Pekka Hmlinen, The Comanche Empire Part II: Bordered Lands October 23rd: The Blood of Conquest Part II: Violence and Race Karl Jacoby, Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History http://www.brown.edu/Research/Aravaipa/ October 30th: Policing Nature Across Borders Lissa Wadewitz, The Nature of Borders November 6th: Policing People Across Borders Erika Lee, Enforcing the Borders: Chinese Exclusion along the U.S. Borders with Canada and Mexico, 18821924, Journal of American History 89:1 (June 2002) Alexandra Minna Stern, Buildings, Boundaries, and Blood: Medicalization and Nation-Building on the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1910-1930, Hispanic American Historical Review 79:1 (February 1999): 41-81 Rachel St. John, Divided Ranges: Trans-border Ranches and the Creation of National Space along the Western Mexican-U.S. Border, in Bridging National Borders in North America, Benjamin Johnson and Andrew Graybill, editors (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010). November 13th: Comparative Borderlands Histories Andrew Graybill, Policing the Great Plains: Rangers, Mounties, and the North American Frontier November 20th: Peoples Between Chester Brown, Louis Real: A Comic Strip Biography Michel Hogue, Crossing the Line: Race, Nationality, and the Deportation of the Canadian Crees in the Canada-U.S. Borderlands in Sterling Evans, ed., The Borderlands of the American and Canadian Wests: Essays on Regional History of the Forty-ninth Parallel December 4th: The Borderlands in Fiction Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, The evening Redness in the West

- or Guy Vanderhaeghe, The Last Crossing

December 11th: No Class (Legislative Day): Primary Source Analysis Due