Read Frederick Jackson Turner’s “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/TURNER/chapter1.html).

1		What is Turner’s central argument in this article? Why do you think it caused such a stir when it was presented in 1893?
2		How does Turner describe the “frontier” upon which the westward migrating Americans arrived? What does he overlook in describing the frontier in this way?

Read through the synopses of the episodes of PBS’ documentary New Perspectives on the West (http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/program/episodes/index.htm)

3		(click on the title of each episode for the full synopsis). How does the perspective of the West illustrated by this series differ from that of Turner?
4		If this series is illustrative of the “new” Western history, how has the focus of Western history changed over the last few decades? Who are the characters and groups that receive greater emphasis in this “new” history?
5		Once again, we return to the issue of why these debates within the academic and cultural communities over American history should matter to us. Why should modern Americans outside these circles of academia and public history care about the debates over the focal points of Western history?

Other sites with primary and secondary sources about the West include:

6		WestWeb- http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/westweb/ - a wide variety of documents and links relating to all aspects of Western history. “California as I Saw It: First-Person Narratives of California’s Early Years, 1849-1900” (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/cbhtml/cbhome.html)