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

In 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner published his revolutionary essay, The Significance of the Frontier in American History. A century later, many of the country's most innovative scholars of Western history assembled at a conference at Utah State University under the direction of historian Clyde A. Milner II. Here they delivered papers meant to map the exciting new territory opened in recent years in the history of the West. Gathering the best of these essays, this collection aims to produce a compelling assessment of the newest Western historiography. The timely, vigorous entries go beyond conventional narratives of westward expansion, and make clear the stimulating uses of scholarship informed by recent critical and multicultural theory. Contributors include William Deverell on the significance of the West in American history; David Gutierrez on Mexican Americans and cultural identity; Susan Rhoades Neel on nature and the environment; Gail M. Nomura on Asia and Asian Americans; Anne F. Hyde on cultural perceptions; David Rich Lewis on twentieth-century Native Americans; Susan Lee Johnson on men, women, and gender; and Quintard Taylor on the history of African Americans in the West. Each essay is accompanied by commentaries written by other top scholars in the field, and the eminent historian Allan G. Bogue supplies a lucid introduction.