HIST 162
"New Worlds for All": European-Indian Encounters in Colonial North America Fall 2009
Division II Writing Skills
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Class Details

This course focuses on the interactions between Indians and Europeans in the contexts of Spanish, French, Dutch, and British exploration and colonization of North America. Drawing upon our critical reading of secondary and primary sources, we will explore the political, economic, social, and cultural transformations visited upon both Indian and Euro-American societies as a result of European attempts to control vast North American territories from the Saint Lawrence valley to Florida and from the Lower Mississippi valley to California. Because of the large scope of our inquiry we will proceed both chronologically and thematically. Our themes will include: Indian resistance and adaptation to European invasions and evangelizing efforts; diplomacy, warfare, and the evolution of North American geopolitics; Frontier exchange economies and the transformation of material cultures; the transformation and construction of colonial identities (Euro-American and Indian concepts of “self,” the racialization of Euro-American perceptions of Indians and Indians’ perceptions of Europeans). Over the course of the semester, students will write several response papers based on secondary readings to help them assess how historians have addressed these themes. These papers will serve as the basis for our discussion of the methodologies, theories, and sources historians use to reconstruct the history of European-Indian encounters. Short response papers will also familiarize students with some of the most important historiographical debates of colonial North American history and will help them conceptualize and write an original research paper based upon a combination of primary and secondary sources.
The Class: Format: seminar
Limit: 19
Expected: 19
Class#: 1005
Grading: yes pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: evaluation will be based on class attendance and participation, weekly response papers and the final research paper
Prerequisites: none
Enrollment Preferences: first-year students, and then sophomores
Distributions: Division II Writing Skills
Attributes: AMST Comp Studies in Race, Ethnicity, Diaspora
HIST Group F Electives - U.S. + Canada
HIST Group G Electives - Global History

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