A New Significance Re-Envisioning the History of the American West

by Milner, Clyde A.

• ISBN13: 9780195100488
• ISBN10: 0195100484
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-10-24
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

In 1893, Fredrick Jackson Turner published his revolutionary essay, "TheSignificance of the Frontier in American History." A century later, thecountry's most innovative scholars of Western history assembled at a conferenceat Utah State University under the direction of historian Clyde A. Milner. Herethey delivered essays meant to map the exciting new territory opened in recentyears in the history of the West. Gathering the best of these essays, thiscollection aims to produce the first systematic assessment of the new Westernhistoriography. The entries include William Deverell on the significance of theWest in American history; David Gutierrez on Mexican Americans; Susan RhodesNeel on nature and the environment; Gail M. Nomura on Asia and Asian Americans;Anne F. Hyde on Western culture; David Rich Lewis on Native Americans; Susan LeeJohnson on women in the West; and Qunitard Taylor on race and African-Americans.Each essay is accompanied by commentaries written by other top scholars, andeminent historian Allan G. Bogue supplies a penetrating introduction.

Author Biography

Clyde A. Milner II is Professor of History at Utah State University. Editor of the Western Historical Quarterly, he is co-editor of The Oxford History of the American West (1994).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Envisioning a Second Century of Western History	p. xi
The Course of Western History's First Century	p. 3
Fighting Words: The Significance of the American West in the History of the United States	p. 29
Commentaries
Courage without Illusion	p. 56
The New Significance of the American West	p. 61
Significant to Whom?: Mexican Americans and the History of the American West	p. 67
Commentaries
In Pursuit of a Brown West	p. 90
Interpreting Voice and Locating Power	p. 97
A Place of Extremes: Nature, History, and the American West	p. 105
Commentaries
A Mosaic of Different Environments	p. 125
Place versus Region in Western Environmental History	p. 130
Significant Lives: Asia and Asian Americans in the U.S. West	p. 135
Commentaries
Through Western Eyes: Discovering Chinese Women in America	p. 158
Extending Democracy's Reach	p. 168
Cultural Filters: The Significance of Perception	p. 175
Commentaries
Looking West from Here and There	p. 202
The Shadow of Pikes Peak	p. 205
Still Native: The Significance of Native Americans in the History of the Twentieth-Century American West	p. 213
Commentaries
We Are Restored	p. 241
New Awareness for an Old Significance	p. 247
"A Memory Sweet to Soldiers": The Significance of Gender	p. 255
Commentaries
Staring at the Sun	p. 279
A Regendered, Reracialized, and Resituated West	p. 283
Concluding Statements
Through the Prism of Race: The Meaning of African-American History in the West	p. 289
Reintroducing a Re-envisioned West	p. 300
Contributors	p. 307
Index	p. 311
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.