Project 1 Assignments: Biography

Referring to the readings, films and site explorations for our class, choose a real person who lived in the Seattle area at some point between 1851 and 1900 and write a 5-page (typed, double-spaced) biography of this person’s life in relation to some of the events that occurred in and around Seattle during that time. You should pick a subject whose life or life circumstances interest you. Your biography can tell the story of your subject's whole life, or just some part of it, but it should show how the subject was involved in or affected by events in the Seattle area--namely, those events represented in the group timeline.

You will need to make a research plan to help you manage your time in the coming weeks. As you make your research plan, think about the research challenges you’ll face. Does your biographical subject count as a “major” or “minor” historical figure? Why? I.e., what do those designations presume? If you choose a “major” historical figure, what kinds of research problems and advantages do you think you’ll encounter? How can you address these issues? If you choose a “minor” historical figure, what kinds of research problems and advantages do you think you’ll encounter? How can you address these issues?

Research plan due: 1/30/08
Biography due: 2/22/08

Project 1 Assignments: Timeline

Using the readings, films and site explorations for our class, we will collectively construct a timeline of early Seattle history, from pre-colonial times to about 1900. This group timeline will help you plan and write your project 1 biography. You will turn in a version of the timeline with your biography, with additional dates and events relevant to your biographical subject’s life.

In order to make this timeline useful for all possible biographical subjects, we need to think broadly and creatively about what counts as an important “event” in the history of Seattle. What kinds of events can be labeled with a specific date? What kinds of events get recorded? What kinds of events get left out—and why? How do the events and people who are left out continue to haunt the city and its history? How can we represent these invisible events in our timeline?

Your job is to provide data for our timeline as COMMENTS on this posting. Organize your events chronologically. For each timeline entry, provide:

1) the date. If your event can't be tied to a specific date, give it a range, like late 1880s, or 1800-1830, or circa 1900.
2) a brief explanation of the event. What happened?
3) source information. Use the same MLA format that you are using in your reading log.

Please also post COMMENTS about timeline-related issues and problems, in response to the questions above, for example.

Timeline due: 2/22/08.

Project 1 Introduction

In the textbook history of Seattle, the city’s origins can be traced back to November 13, 1851, when Arthur C. Denny and the “Denny party” landed at what is now called Alki Point, in West Seattle. These founding fathers, determined to build a new city, went on to plan the village that, by dint of hard work and savvy investments, became a lumber station, a trading post, a boom-town, a wonder of civil engineering and gradually a thriving metropolis.

There are a number of problems with this account. First of all, the members of the "Denny party" were not the first white settlers in the area. More importantly, the U.S. interest in “manifest destiny” (the belief that the United States should extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean) and the colonizing of the “New World” by Europeans in the first place (beginning with Columbus) ignored the fact that the land was already inhabited. Seattle’s history is complicated by relations between white settlers and original Native residents, as well as by competition within each of these two groups. Seattle is haunted by the legacy of these conflicts; even the names of certain city landscapes and landmarks testify to this unresolved past.

For this project, we’ll investigate some of the myths and histories that Seattle has created and destroyed. Specifically, we’ll focus on two geographic areas, their histories and their presents: the Duwamish River, particularly where it meets Elliott Bay, and Pioneer Square. One, named for the Seattle-area tribe that negotiated with the whites and then lost its treaty rights, is now an industrial waste-site. The other, now a commercially thriving historic district, celebrates the achievement of the settlers—although it really owes its neighborhood identity to the “gold rush” of 1897, the event that was the turning point in the city’s economic fortune. These two neighborhoods tell us a lot about the relationships between power, landscape and history in the city’s development and identity. They also point to the ways that the terms "natives" and "newcomers," as designations that can help or hurt their bearers, change depending on context...

PROJECT 1 SCHEDULE

1.14
Intro, wrap up from last quarter

1.16
“Detroit Arcadia” (Urban Inventions Course Reader)
“Mystery on Pearl Street” (hand-out)

1.18
PORTFOLIO REVISIONS DUE
Watch Alki: Birthplace of Seattle and Chief Seattle: A Biography

1.21
NO CLASS--MLK DAY

1.23
“Building on Disappearance” (Urban Inventions Course Reader)

1.25
“History of Seattle Before 1900” (wikipedia)
Museum History & Industry ($2.50)--bring your journal and take notes for timeline

1.28
“The Haunted City” (Urban Inventions Course Reader)

1.30
RESEARCH PLAN DUE
“Seattle Illahee” (Urban Adaptations Course Reader)

2.1
“A River Lost” (Urban Adaptations Course Reader)
Duwamish trip (busfare)--details TBA; bring journal and camera

2.4
“Hard Drive to Klondike” (Urban Adaptations Course Reader)

2.6
timeline updates

2.8
Pioneer Square tour and Gold Rush Museum (busfare)--bring journal and camera

2.11
library workshop 1 (in class)

2.13
readings on history.org TBA

2.15
Underground Tour (entrance $)

2.18
NO CLASS--PRESIDENTS DAY

2.20
historical biography and timeline drafts due

2.22
HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY AND TIMELINE DUE

Hello.

Urban Adaptations is an Integrated Studies course at Cornish College of the Arts. We are examining four neighborhoods in Seattle WA at different moments in the city's history, with a particular interest in how different cultures and different approaches to nature have shaped the landscape. Each of these neighborhoods has the multiply inscribed quality of the palimpsest... history has been written onto the landscape, then partially erased and re-written, a process that continues and requires human and non-human inhabitants to adapt to changing conditions.