James Fenimore Cooper's Frontier: The Pioneers as History

American 

Quarterly

, Vol. 28, No. 2, Special Issue: An American Enlightenment. (Summer, 1976), pp. 187-205 

55

 Carol Berkin, First Generations: Women in Colonial America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1996) 

56

 Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: "Woman's Sphere" in New England, 1780-1835, 2nd ed. (New Haven: 

Yale University Press, 1997) 

---

 

13 

Formation of American Society

57

 examines power dynamics while Liberty's Daughters: The 

Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800

58

 refutes notions that women 

enjoyed a “golden age” in America. Changing Ideas About Women in the United States, 1776-

1825,

59

 Janet Wilson James’ reprinted dissertation from the 1950s rounds out the picture with a 

pre-feminist view of colonial women’s experiences. 

 

As I. Bernard Cohen has written, the role of science as part of the founding principles of 

America is a topic that has been somewhat neglected. However, Cohen’s Science and the 

Founding Fathers: Science in the Political Thought of Jefferson, Franklin, Adams and Madison

60

 

does a great deal to change that. John C., Greene’s “American Science Comes of Age, 1780-

1820”

61

 and Hyman Kuritz’s “The Popularization of Science in Nineteenth Century America”

62

 

are both good resources on the topic as well. 

William Cronon’s Changes In the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New 

England

63

 provides an ecological history of New England, before and after the arrival of 

Europeans. For understanding how Americans’ general notions of wilderness have evolved, 

Roderick Nash’s

 

Wilderness and the American Mind

64

 is an excellent study, as is Cronon’s essay 

“The Trouble With Wilderness, Or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.”

65

 

Richard Slotkin provides several interesting interpretations of the American frontier in 

Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization,

66

 in which he argues 

that the frontier is a mythic construction which either justified or masked a hoist of racial and 

social injustices taking place in the name of American expansion. Mary Lawlor examines the 

                                                 

57

 Mary Beth Norton,  Founding Mothers and Fathers: Gendered Power and the Formation of American Society 

(New York: Knopf, 1996) 

58

 Mary Beth Norton, Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800 (Boston: 

Little, Brown, 1980) 

59

 Janet Wilson James, Changing Ideas About Women in the United States, 1776-1825 (New York: Garland 

Publishing Inc., 1981) 

60

 I. Bernard Cohen, Science and the Founding Fathers: Science in the Political Thought of Jefferson, Franklin, 

Adams and Madison (New York: Norton, 1995) 

61

 John C. Greene, “American Science Comes of Age, 1780-1820,” 

The Journal of American History

, Vol. 55, No. 

1. (Jun., 1968)

 

62

 Hyman Kuritz, “The Popularization of Science in Nineteenth Century America,”

History of Education Quarterly

, 

Vol. 21, No. 3. (Autumn, 1981) 

63

 William Cronon, Changes In the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill and 

Wang, 1983) 

64

 Roderick Nash,

 

Wilderness and the American Mind, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982) 

65

 William Cronon, “The Trouble With Wilderness, Or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature” 

Environmental History, 

Vol. 1, No. 1. (January, 1996) 7-28 

66

 Richard Slotkin; The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization (New York: 

Atheneum, 1985) 

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14 

western literature that contributed to this myth in Recalling the Wild: Naturalism and the Closing 

of the American West.

67

 

                                                 

67

 Mary Lawlor, Recalling the Wild: Naturalism and the Closing of the American West (New Brunswick, NJ: 

Rutgers University Press, 2000) 

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15 

CHAPTER 1: RELIGION