The American West

Catalog description

This lecture course surveys that vast and varied region now known as the American West, and the earlier “wests” that preceded it. The U.S. West contains a distinctive mixture of mountains and deserts; wide-open spaces and sprawling cities; Natives and newcomers. This region functions as an emblematic space in U.S. pop culture and national mythology (think “cowboys and Indians,” Yellowstone and Grand Canyon, Hollywood and Vegas). It also figures prominently in environmental history, political history, and the histories of religion, race, war, and diplomacy. Today, the West is where the United States faces China across the Pacific; and where the republic meets its neighbor Mexico along a 2,000-mile border, some of it barricaded. From Great Plains Indigenous equestrian innovators in the eighteenth century to Bay Area tech entrepreneurs in the contemporary moment, this course gives the West and all its peoples their due.