A Sense of Where We Are

College of Arts and Sciences
Department of History

A Sense of Where We Are: History and Literature of the Pacific Northwest

This project will create curriculum materials on Pacific Northwest history and literature for secondary-school teachers and students in Washington state. Some time between 7th and 12th grade, every student in Washington must take a course on state and regional history. To enrich the instructional materials available for such a course, the Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest, Department of History, makes available curriculum units on significant themes in regional history, both on-line and in hard copy. These units include background information and guidelines for teachers as well as an extensive selection of primary sources intended for students in the classroom.

This project, "A Sense of Where We Are," will produce materials linking literature and history in the Pacific Northwest. Building upon an interdisciplinary 400-level course and public authors' series during Summer 2001, it will examine literature and history together as a means of exploring regional identity. Assembled by a professor of literature and a professor of history, in consultation with secondary-school teachers, it will range in time from the pre-contact stories of Native Americans through the environmentalist literature of the late 20th century. Among other things, the curriculum unit will consider as texts such historical documents as exploration accounts, fur traders' reports, Indian treaties, pioneer narratives, and booster publicity, and it will discuss historical novels, short stories, memoirs, and poems for what they reveal and mask about the regional past. The site will be designed with secondary-school students and teachers chiefly in mind, but it should also interest the wider range of people interested in local and regional history.

Contact:	John Findlay Professor, Department of History jfindlay@u.washington.edu
Allocation:	$25,512
Date Funded:	April 2001

Tools for Transformation Funded Proposals