I would like to start by agreeing with AJ\u2019s post<\/a>, especially his point that Turner\u2019s work is useful and that it does a great job of paying tribute to the pioneers who first tamed \u201cthe frontier\u201d. I also think that Eli<\/a> has done a fantastic job of highlighting the flaws in Turner\u2019s work, and so I will not be focusing on that. Instead, I would like to highlight\u00a0 what I view as one of Turner\u2019s greatest strengths, his importance in his own time in establishing the field of western history and inspiring a new generation of historians.<\/p>\n One of the biggest criticisms of Turner is his focus on white male frontiersman and ignorance of racial minorities and women. I think that this must be excused because Turner was writing in a time when these groups were not a focus of historical literature.\u00a0 It also is important to focus on Turner\u2019s influence in mentoring a new generation of historians. Cronon himself admits that Turner was massively beneficial in \u201cshaping as it did a generation of scholars.\u201d (Cronon 161) I don\u2019t think it is too great of a jump to think that Turner\u2019s dramatic and sweeping writing style helped to draw in this new generation of students.<\/p>\n Finally, I found myself thinking back to some of our in-class discussion of disaster as a triggering mechanism for revealing flaws in societal systems. Turner\u2019s frontier thesis has been widely amended and criticized, and in the process a there is now a wide range of strong historical analyzes of the American west. Without Turner to to prompt such a response, who knows if we would have current body of work on the history of the American west?<\/p>\n I really enjoyed reading Turner\u2019s essay and feel that it prompted me to think about a region and period of American history that I often overlook.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I would like to start by agreeing with AJ\u2019s post, especially his point that Turner\u2019s work is useful and that it does a great job of paying tribute to the pioneers who first tamed \u201cthe frontier\u201d. I also think that Eli has done a fantastic job of highlighting the flaws in Turner\u2019s work, and so … <\/p>\n