New Yorker Article example

Although you can browse around in the reporting and essays section for more examples of the kind of article we're talking about, this week's essay by Malcolm Gladwell uses history to ask questions about modern social activism, Facebook, and Twitter.

Article on Colorado River Drying Up

A seven-state negotiation will decide if Arizona and Nevada get even less of the water still left.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/us/28mead.html?_r=1&hp

Article on Mexican Immigration Reactions

George, or anyone interested in SW immigration, there's an article in the NYTimes today on the practice of leaving water for immigrants crossing through the Arizona desert, and how the state/border patrol is reacting to it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/us/27water.html?hp

Paper Topics

Here you guys should post your ideas for your papers, so we will know your interests and be able to post links to anything relevant we run across in the course of the semester.  I'm not sure if the group blog format will let you edit this post and just include the information here.  If it does, great.  Otherwise, put your plans in the comment thread.

Background reading

Taking a course in regional history can be tough if you don't have a strong undergrad background in US history.  If you don't, or you just want a quick refresher, here are some suggestions:

-- for a good grasp of the major events and peoples in American history, taking a look at a balanced survey textbook like Out of Many is a good idea.  Read through the table of contents.  Do you remember most of it?  If there's an area that seems unfamiliar, read that section.  If you plan to continue studying American history, or teach it, having a textbook on hand is very useful.  Everyone forgets what, say, the Lecompton Constitution was from time to time, and having a reference to go to will help with your work in many classes.  If you can't find one in the library (try asking the reference librarians) I will have them buy one and put it on reserve.

-- if you didn't have the American West as an undergrad, you'll probably benefit from an overview text.  This reading seminar can't possible teach all the events and themes you'd have had from a lecture course, and you'll have an easier time placing readings in context with something like the Oxford History of the American West or Major Problems in the History of the American West on hand.  I note that Amazon currently has several copies of the Oxford history in hardcover for about $2.  If you're at all serious about pursuing study of the west, this a major steal and you all should jump on it.

-- finally, if you could use a stronger understanding of the major interpretative debates American historians engage in, I advise checking out Interpretations of American History, volumes I and II, or perhaps the Major Problems in American History series, (three volumes - I've linked to the first here).  Interpretations is much more current; Major Problems combines analytic essays with documents.

If you are interested in some of these but reluctant to buy, let me know and I'll get the library to buy anything we need that they may not have.

Welcome!

Welcome, everyone.  I've thrown up some pages with useful or interesting links; I'll add more as I get time. You all should be able to add things to pages or write posts with thoughts you have or interesting resources or events you've run across.  Let me know if you're having any trouble - I'm not a blogger expert by any means but I've been able to figure things out so far.

There are explicit teaching resources in the centers and primary sources pages, and resources like videos and art are obviously useful for teaching...it might be worth putting up a separate teaching resource page and copying those over there, if enough of you intend to use them and would find it easier to navigate with them together.

This space - like our class discussions -  will be what you make of it.   A reason I chose to put it on Blogger instead of waiting to get inside the UMB system was the hope that, if it turned out to be a useful resource, it could remain something you have access to after you graduate. 

The blog itself is set up to be public, but commenting is restricted to members.  

What suggestions do you all have for making this space a good resource?