HIST 2315 Equality State Gender & Ethnicity
This course explores the racial, religious and cultural divides that have sometimes created chasms between diverse groups of Wyoming's inhabitants from prehistoric times to the present, and attempts to bridge those gaps. It dissects race relations between Caucasian, Native-, Asian-, Latin-, and African American groups including Wyoming's extraordinary lynching heritage. It assesses gender-based divides in this place known as "the birthplace of women's suffrage," as well as the crucial feminine role in opening South Pass and catalyzing the Great Migration of wagon trains across the continent. (3 lect.) HUM
Major Topics
- Review context of U.S., Western and Wyoming History
- Changing race and gender roles and relations in Wyoming
- Roles of religion on the frontier
- African American, Hispanic, Chinese, and Japanese experience in Wyoming
- Political activism and debate
- Warfare, segregation, lynching, institutionalized discrimination, complex legal and social hierarchical relations between multiple ethnic groups in the Equality State
Outcomes
In order to successfully complete this course, the student will:
1. Compare race relations in the legal and social development of the State of Wyoming. Analyze and discuss the sometimes conflicting intricacies of the diverse aspects of this area of study within the larger contexts of women's history, the American West and the history of the United States
2. Assess the reasons for and the results of the alliances or violent hostility between various racial, religious and ethnic groups (i.e., black, white, multiple Native American, Hispanic and Asian) who occupied the region. Assess the complex interplay between these groups as they all sought to control access to natural resources and maintain or build homes in the West. Contrast and discuss the difference between cultures in the study area and other regions of the Trans-Mississippi West
3. Determine women’s history issues focusing on events and people at South Pass and the surrounding region including the feminine role in catalyzing the Great Migration, global geopolitical ramifications of the resultant westward migration, women’s suffrage, etc. Identify and compare social, racial and other forces which brought these issues to a head on the Continental Divide and across Wyoming
4. Compare the basic precepts of historiography and the methodological tools of the historian. Employ appropriate approaches to the study of history, and utilize both traditional and more contemporary, technologically-based methods to complete research assignments