Western Traditions 203

1. Western Traditions 203 American Experiences and Constitutional Change

2. First Things First • “Things You Need to Know” handout • Course website • Discussion sections • Close reading, thinking, talking, writing • Example: Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address • Terrorist: “Sic Semper Tyrannis!” • Define “history” – product or process? • Example: George Washington

3. Whose “History”? • Lone Star (John Sayles, 1996) • Power privileges texts • Whose version is the “official story”? • From subatomic physics, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle • Act of measuring something changes the thing • No such thing as an “impartial observer”

4. “What we see is not nature, but nature subjected to our means of questioning.” -- paraphrased from Werner Heisenberg (1927)

5. Influence of $$$ on govt. Interests of many vs. few Class struggle populism Agrarian vs. urban culture Counterculture War & national identity vs. peace & internal dissension Confrontation with land Human migrations Immigration Slavery Gold Rush Movement of African Americans to North Transience of middle-class Porous southern border Enduring Conflicts

6. Columbus (1451-1506) Heroic navigator Mistaken explorer Agent of destiny Genocidal conqueror “dis-” coverer or “un-” coverer? Smith (1580-1631) Leader & savior of Jamestown Colony Raider of Indian towns Romantic interest of Pocohontas Public relations expert Christopher Columbus& John Smith

7. Primary Sources • Original words of contemporary participants and commentators • Need close reading • Avoid “presentism” • ”Strip ourselves in imagination of all the surroundings of our own lives . . . [the past] is another planet, another human universe” • -- Fernand Braudel (1949)