WEEK 12 · INQUIRY MODULE
Week 12: Crisis and Mobilization in the West, 1920s–1945
How did environmental crisis, federal development, and wartime mobilization redistribute opportunity, coercion, and vulnerability in the West?
Dates: November 9–13, 2026
Focus
- Oil, boomtowns, Dust Bowl ecology, and migration
- New Deal infrastructure, labor, and federal power
- Japanese American incarceration, defense industry, Bracero labor, and Native military service
Before class
- Read: American Yawp, chapters 22–24 selected sections.
- Open and inspect the linked primary-source collection(s). Record one source, one context question, and one limitation.
- Scholarship lens: Sarah Deutsch, Making a Modern U.S. West (2022), selected excerpt; pair with a Densho or Bracero oral history.
Primary-source portals
Tuesday/Thursday meeting plan
| Date | Status | Plan |
|---|
| Tuesday, November 10 | Class | Oil, Dust Bowl ecology, migration, photography, and causal explanation. |
| Thursday, November 12 | Class | New Deal development, wartime mobilization, incarceration, Bracero labor, and oral-history ethics. |
Source Reasoning Lab 4 due Friday, November 13.
After class
Deliverable: Source Reasoning Lab 4 and Reading & Reasoning Check 10.
- 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.