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History 8700
Studies in Early American History:
Imperial Borderlands and Native Homelands
Fall 2015
Vanderbilt University
Wednesday 3:10-6:00
Buttrick Hall 316
Daniel H. Usner
Benson 222 322-5949 (office)
The purpose of this course is to explore colonial American history from places and spaces deep within the continent of North America. With attention focused on initiatives and responses of indigenous nations during their early interactions with multiple European empires, the question of how American Indians defined and delineated their homelands will be central. Migrations and exchanges that occurred across the borderlands between colonial and native societies will also be closely examined.
Books have been selected to include a wide range of periods, regions, topics, and methods, but in one semester we cannot possibly cover all subjects and approaches currently being pursued in the field. Our weekly discussions will focus on the substance of each book, its historiographical and methodological significance, and the author’s particular argument.
To help facilitate discussions, each member of the class will prepare a short critical review (2-3 pages) of two or three weekly assignments. The student responsible for the review should e-mail a copy of the report to all class members by the Tuesday afternoon prior to our Wednesday class.
The final written assignment for this course will be an essay (20-25 pages) due on Wednesday, December 16. This essay should either produce original research on a selected topic in imperial borderlands and indigenous homelands or explore the historiography around a problem covered in the course syllabus. Additional reading for the latter choice may include other recent monographs, journal literature, and older works.
Aug. 26 Introduction
Sept. 2 Juliana Barr and Edward Countryman, eds. Contested Spaces of Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014)
Sept. 9 Robbie Ethridge, From Chicaza to Chickasaw: The European Invasion and the Transformation of the Mississippian World, 1540-1715 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010
Sept. 16 Michael Witgen, An Infinity of Nations: How the Native New World Shaped Early North America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011)
Sept. 23 Jon Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods: Iroquoia, 1534-1701 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2010)
Sept. 30 Kathleen DuVal, The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006)
Oct. 7 Stephen Warren, The Worlds the Shawnees Made: Migration and Violence in Early America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014)
Oct. 21 Elizabeth A. Fenn, Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People (New York: Hill and Wang, 2014)
Oct. 28 Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008)
Nov. 11 Jay Gitlin, The Bourgeois Frontier: French Towns, French Traders and American Expansion (New Have: Yale University Press, 2010)
Nov. 18 Ned Blackhawk, Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006)
Dec. 2 Brian DeLay, War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008)
Dec. 9 Enrique R. Lamadrid, Hermanitos Comanchitos: Indo-Hispano Rituals of Captivity and Redemption (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003)