NEH Summer Scholars will develop a sophisticated understanding of the Spanish and Mexican influences on California and the nation by visiting historic sites, attending lectures by top historians, completing assigned readings prior to the workshop, and engaging in close-readings of primary documents either on loan or duplicated from premier research archives in California. From the Bancroft Library, for example, NEH Summer Scholars will look at original documents from the John D. Gilchriese Collection, detailing construction of a hotel by one of the most prominent Mexican Californians of the nineteenth century; from the CSUN Special Collections, NEH Summer Scholars will study a rare book published in 1758, A Natural and Civil History of California by Manuel Vegas; From The Huntington Library, NEH Summer Scholars will read original accounts of the “Battle of Chino.”; From the Archives of the Archdiocese, NEH Summer Scholars will study birth, death, and baptismal records, gaining unique insight into the process of conquering and converting the indigenous people of California.
Prior to the workshop, NEH Summer Scholars will read the books below, all of which can be purchased in either new or used condition on Amazon and other book websites. It is recommended that you order the Timbrook, Chumash Ethnobotany book from http://www.heydaybooks.com/ rather than through Amazon.
Steven Hackel, Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis: Indian-Spanish Relations in Colonial California (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005)
Phoebe Kropp, California Vieja: Culture and Memory in a Modern American Place (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006)
Jan Timbrook, Chumash Ethnobotany: Plant Knowledge among the Chumash People of Southern California (Berkeley: Heyday Press, 2007)
David Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009)