Core Topics: When Worlds Collide: From Contact to the Constitution

This course will examine North American history from the perspective of the collision and exchange of cultures and peoples. From the Mississippian Indian civilization at Cahokia to the Illinois, Iroquois, Algonkian, and other Native American peoples, we will see how Indians resisted, adapted, and interacted with French, English, Spanish, and Dutch Europeans. African peoples were another key part of this cultural collision, as hundreds of thousands were brought to North America in the slave trade. The course ends with the consolidation of white European power in the creation of the United States. Major themes in the course are race, power, and religion.