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

THE AMERICAN WEST

Course Practices and Historical Thinking

Our weekly inquiry cycle

Move | What students do | Evidence of learning
Frame | Use a map, object, quotation, or contradiction to generate a historical problem. | Initial claim or question
Analyze | Source, contextualize, corroborate, and closely read primary evidence. | Annotations and source notes
Test | Compare explanations, scales, and causal claims. | Discussion, structured controversy, or short synthesis
Produce | Revise a claim for an academic or public audience. | Exit ticket, lab memo, essay, or capstone component

Source-analysis protocol

1. Observe: What is present? What form, language, data, or visual choices matter?
2. Source: Who made it, when, for whom, and for what purpose?
3. Contextualize: What conditions, institutions, or relationships shaped it?
4. Corroborate: Which independent or differently situated evidence supports, complicates, or contradicts it?
5. Interpret: What can this source support—and what can it not establish?

Discussion and care

We will encounter conquest, forced removal, enslavement, racial violence, child removal, incarceration, and environmental harm. The course does not avoid difficult evidence, but it uses advance notice, purposeful selection, contextual framing, and alternatives when a medium creates an access barrier.

Accessibility defaults

- Materials use headings, descriptive links, readable tables, and text alternatives.
- Audio or video requires captions or a transcript.
- Public-history artifacts require image descriptions or alt text and an accessible backup format.
- Students may propose an equivalent format when the original format is not essential to the learning goal.