Title: Week 1 Overview and Inquiry
Course: The American West: Power, Place, and Memory > Section: Week 1 · August 24–28, 2026: Where—and When—Is the West?

WEEK 1 · INQUIRY MODULE

Week 1: Where—and When—Is the West?

What changes when “the West” is treated as a relationship and a process rather than a fixed region?

Dates: August 24–28, 2026

Focus

- Competing maps and boundaries
- Turner, borderlands, New Western History, and Indigenous-centered frameworks
- Historical thinking and archive ethics

Before class

1. Read: American Yawp introduction and relevant map materials.
2. Open and inspect the linked primary-source collection(s). Record one source, one context question, and one limitation.
3. Scholarship lens: Ned Blackhawk, The Rediscovery of America (2023), introduction or library-reserve excerpt.

Primary-source portals

- Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1893), excerpt
- Library of Congress Primary Source Analysis Tool

Tuesday/Thursday meeting plan

Date | Status | Plan
Tuesday, August 25 | Class | Course launch; diagnostic boundary map; establish evidence, discussion, and Decision Record norms.
Thursday, August 27 | Class | Compare frontier, borderlands, regional, environmental, and Indigenous-centered frameworks; source clinic.

First T/Th meeting is Tuesday, August 25.

After class

Deliverable: Diagnostic boundary map and exit ticket; completion evidence only.

- 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.