Title: Week 11 Overview and Inquiry
Course: The American West: Power, Place, and Memory > Section: Week 11 · November 2–6, 2026: Conservation, Reclamation, Extraction, and Tourism

WEEK 11 · INQUIRY MODULE

Week 11: Conservation, Reclamation, Extraction, and Tourism

When reformers called western land “public,” whose uses and histories became illegible?

Dates: November 2–6, 2026

Focus

- National parks and Indigenous dispossession
- Federal reclamation and water
- Mining, timber, and conservation
- Tourism, authenticity, and public memory

Before class

1. Read: American Yawp, chapters 17 and 20 selected sections.
2. Open and inspect the linked primary-source collection(s). Record one source, one context question, and one limitation.
3. Scholarship lens: Megan Black, The Global Interior (2018), or Katrina Phillips, Staging Indigeneity (2021), selected excerpt.

Primary-source portals

- National Park Service: Honoring Tribal Legacies
- Bureau of Reclamation History Program

Tuesday/Thursday meeting plan

Date | Status | Plan
Tuesday, November 3 | Class | National parks, tourism, and Indigenous dispossession.
Thursday, November 5 | Class | Reclamation, water, extraction, conservation, administrative power, and capstone source defenses.

Capstone Source Dossier due Friday, November 6.

After class

Deliverable: Capstone Source Dossier and Defense; Reading & Reasoning Check 9.

- I can answer the weekly inquiry with a contestable claim.
- I can name at least two pieces of evidence and explain their limits.
- I can identify an interpretation that my evidence supports, complicates, or challenges.