Schedule - Weeks 1 and 2

Week 1

Wednesday, August 31
Introductions. Definitions: “ethnicity,” “race,” “America.” Ice-breaker exploring students’ understanding of their own ethnic identities.

Friday, September 2
Hemispheric context – what is “America?”
DUE… READING: The Americas: A Hemispheric History, Chapter 1 “Americas? America?” and selection from Chapter 2 “Between Colonizations: The Americas’ First ‘Normalcy’”


Week 2

Monday, September 5
No class – Labor Day Holiday

Wednesday, September 7
Early migrations to the Americas – pre-Columbian peoples.
DUE… READING: The American Indian and the Problem of History, Chapter 3, “American Indians and American History.”

Friday, September 9
Evolving theories about initial migrations to the Americas – the “kelp highway.”
DUE… READING: Jon Erlandson, “The Deep History of Pacific Seafaring” and Jim Cassidy, “Evidence of Prehistoric Native American Seafaring,” both in Mains’l Haul: A Journal of Pacific Maritime History, Winter/Spring 2011