Title: Course Home
Course: The American West: Power, Place, and Memory > Section: Start Here: Fall 2026 Course Orientation

THE AMERICAN WEST

Course Home

How was the American West made—and who has had the power to define, inhabit, govern, remember, and remake it?

A problem-centered history of the North American West from the eighteenth century through the late twentieth century. The course begins with Indigenous worlds and competing empires, then follows borderlands, migration, state and corporate power, labor, race, gender, environment, sovereignty, and public memory. Northwest Missouri and the Platte Purchase serve as a recurring local lens.

Course format: Upper-division undergraduate; In person with Canvas support; Fall 2026; 15 calendar weeks; Tuesday/Thursday, in person. This Canvas course supports—not replaces—our in-person inquiry, source work, and discussion.

Start here

1. Read the Course Syllabus and Course Practices pages.
2. Review Assignments and Grading, including the staged capstone.
3. Complete the Week 1 diagnostic map before the end of the first class meeting.
4. Confirm that external readings open and contact the instructor about access barriers.

Course throughline

Each week moves through four actions: frame a problem, analyze evidence, test an interpretation, and reflect or produce. We return repeatedly to Northwest Missouri and the Platte Purchase to connect continental histories with local records.

What you will make

- A defended spatial boundary argument
- Four source-reasoning labs with unseen transfer
- A historiographical judgment portfolio
- A staged public-history capstone with oral defense
- A seminar-practice portfolio documenting growth

33-582 meets in person on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Consult Canvas announcements for the exact meeting time and classroom.