Professor Maria Montoya of New York University examines diaries of women who join the trip along the Oregon Trail. She finds heartwrenching stories of women who lost loved ones but could not stop to bury them.
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In the early days of the American West, white settlers were dependent on Native Americans for knowledge of the rough frontier. Professor Maria Montoya of New York University explains that Indians were becoming equally dependent on whites.
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To many, the Great Plains are part of the Great Flyover, whose landscape and history alike are flat and featureless. However, in this region in the middle of the nation, cultures have mingled and clashed for thousands of years. This seminar will focus on the 19th century, though also examining the first peoples and the continuing cultural exchanges of the 20th century. The seminar will begin with the physical setting, plants, and animals, and consider early humans in both Native American traditions and anthropological/archaeological studies. Europeans arriving in the 16th century accelerated the long history of change and evolution, initiating more than three centuries of converging peoples and cultures, new centers of power, flourishing trade, calamitous epidemics, and cultural and material intrusions from across the planet. Participants will visit Bent's Fort to see a cultural crossroads illustrated through one family. They will also examine cattle ranching, homesteading, scientific explorations, and the depiction of the plains in art.
Professor Maria Montoya of New York University reveals the international nature of the California Gold Rush. Miners swarmed into California from Mexico, South America, Europe, and beyond.
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Led by Patty Limerick, this seminar uses focused case studies to explore the larger picture of environmental history, a subject that has grown increasingly complex as historians deepen their understanding of the vast role of "anthropogenic change" (also known as "history") in reconfiguring the places and processes thought of as "natural." Much of the seminar explores the transformation of attitudes, from the assessment of North American landscapes and resources by early settlers to the recognition of the changing "baseline" of global warming, along with a reconsideration—and revision—of the usual polarity-pitting utilitarian approaches in opposition to preservationist approaches to the management of nature. With guest speakers drawn from the University of Colorado's widely respected environmental studies program, the roles of naturalists and scientists in shaping American thinking about nature will receive particular attention, as will changes in the production and consumption of energy, a fundamental matter in environmental history. The concluding field trip to Rocky Mountain National Park gives the themes of the lectures and discussions a down-to-earth grounding in a visit to one of the most popular units in the nation's public lands, while close attention to John McPhee's Encounters with the Archdruid provides a framework for drawing lessons from the past to enhance the quality of contemporary environmental decision-making.
The third in this series of workshops featuring different areas of the permanent collection focuses on images of the West. Depictions of pioneers, Native Americans, and western scenes are used to enhance your curriculum. Landscapes, history paintings, and portraiture are featured.
"This workshop will introduce participants to the Native American cultures of the Ohio River Valley and the personalities that scouted, surveyed and established Ohio's first Euro-American settlement. Guest speakers will include Dr. James H. O'Donnell, Professor of History at Marietta College, and curators and archivists from the Ohio Historical Society and the Marietta College Archives."
"An NCHE team of Elliott West, Flannery Burke, and Linda Clark will explore the topic of The Growth of a Nation: Westward Movement at this Teaching American History colloquium."
"An NCHE team of Greg Smoak, David Byrd, and JoAnn Fox will explore the topic of Frontiers: Homesteaders, Native Americans, Immigrants, and Settling the West at this Frontiers of History colloquium."