American Frontier - Historiography

Historiography

Scores of Turner students became professors in history departments in the western states, and taught courses on the frontier. Scholars have debunked many of the myths of the frontier, but they nevertheless live on in community traditions, folklore and fiction. In the 1970s a historiographical range war broke out between the "old" Western histories, which stressed the influence of the frontier on all of American culture, and the so-called "new Western history" which looked more narrowly at the trans-Mississippi West after 1850 and stressed cultural interaction between Americans and minorities such as Indians and Hispanics. By 2005, Aron argues, the two sides had "reached an equilibrium in their rhetorical arguments and critiques.". Meanwhile environmental history has emerged, in large part from the frontier historiography, hence its emphasis on wilderness.

Since the 1960s an active center is the history department at the University of New Mexico, along with the University of New Mexico Press. Leading historians there include Gerald D. Nash, Donald C. Cutter, Richard N. Ellis, Richard Etulain, Margaret Connell-Szasz, Paul Hutton, Virginia Scharff, and Samuel Truett. The department has collaborated with other departments and emphasizes Southwestern regionalism, minorities in the Southwest, and historiography.