1. Sequence 1:
America and the Frontier

2. Give me five… brands singers sportspeople TV series movie stars films
states
famous historical figures
cartoon characters
famous monuments
cities

3. Introduction: Describe this cartoon Think of a title
Why do you know all these things? Do you think other teenagers from other countries would be able to do the same exercise? Why?
What has happened over the past 50 years?

4. Introduction:
In the lower part, in the bottom right-hand corner we can see Marilyn Monroe ; sitting beside her at a table, we can notice the Statue of Liberty with a bottle of coke in her hand, Mickey Mouse on her left, then Uncle Sam holding a golden Oscar (prize/award). His hat is on the back of the chair and one can note that his pistol is inside the holster which is hanging from the chair. There is also a hamburger and a cornet of French fries/chips on the table.
This document is a cartoon. We have no specific information about its source, whether it comes from a magazine or an ad. We do not have any clue about the date of publication nor the name of the cartoonist. No title nor headline are noticeable but we could give one: “Images of America”
The document features a lot of different American figures and monuments. It stages both living figures and personified imaginary symbols.
In the middle, an Native American is standing beside Elvis Presley. At the top, on the left, Mount Rushmore is towering above all the characters. Indeed, the four presidents have been carved into granite in South Dakota At the top, right in the middle, rises the Empire State Building and on the right can be seen a cowboy wielding a gun, pointing it to the sky.
In the background, the American flag is fluttering in the wind. ( the Stars and Stripes/ the Star-Spangled Banner)
(George Washington—1st president of the USA, led the colonies to independence; Thomas Jefferson—3rd president, principal author of the Declaration of Independence; Theodore Roosevelt—26th president, Nobel Peace Prize; Abraham Lincoln—16th president, led the country through the American Civil War, ended slavery )

5. How to make sense out of it?
What does the cartoon say about America?
Myths and heroes
Spaces and exchanges
--To rise, to tower above, to overlook, to move up, to raise
-The American myth and mythology:
Proportions and size; the bigger, the better. ‘The sky is the limit’, ‘Impossible is nothing’ ‘Shoot for the moon’ ‘If you can dream it you can do it’
-The focal point being the golden Oscar and what draws the attention the most being Monroe’s dress, it is fair to assume that there is an emphasis on how shallow and vain American culture has become.
-The double presence of guns shows how central gun culture has become in the US
-Having all these American heroes and myths sit around the same table makes them look trivial: American symbols are perverted.
-Sense of going up
-Upward mobility:
The idea of transcending the notion of space by moving upwards (skyscrapers…)
-There is an overload of different symbols jumbled up in the space confined space. This hyperbolic accumulation looks ridiculous and caricatural.
Everything is bigger than life in America, it overlooks the whole world.
America is forever about going beyond the frontier, pushing the limit.

6. Les fautes à éviter en CE Recap DS 1
Bien identifier le temps de la question en repérant l’auxiliaire dans la question
Bien identifier l’info demandée pour ne pas répondre à côté. Il ne faut pas ajouter des infos pour le plaisir d’en ajouter, cela vous pénalisera.
Il faut être précis et s’appuyer sur le texte
Ne pas faire des réponses trop longues et soigner votre écriture. Souligner les citations pour plus de clarté
Travailler sur les synonymes pour apprendre à reformuler pour expliquer
Utiliser des connecteurs! Les questions portant sur une comparaison notamment impliquent la mobilisation de connecteurs de contraste, etc…

7. Frontier Definition: -a border between two countries
-a distant area where few people live
-the limits of knowledge in a particular field
Synonyms:
Frontier
Border, borderline, boundary, limit, edge, confine
What frontiers in America:
The frontier and
Spaces and sites of exchanges:

8. FRONTIER, a video game “Create your own story amidst the dusty wastelands of the Wild West. Found cities, become a master hunter, or create your own mansion... experience the Frontier how it was supposed to be- with the power to transform it sitting at your fingertips!”

10. The wilderness The wilderness (n)
Nature, wildland, lack of control, the unknown, immensity, splendor, grandeur
(adj)
Hostile, frightful, sublime, beautiful, impressive, intact, undisturbed, unwelcoming, humbling
(v)
To threaten, to respect, to tame, to fear, to intimidate, to endanger

11. The wilderness The wilderness : the wild as a myth
The Wild & the ‘Power’:
Bryant’s To A Waterfowl
-Nature as something transcendental
and godly to contemplate (to gaze at)
-Landscape & Inscape: Discovering nature as a reflection of an inward journey: ‘In the long way that I must trace alone’
(Personification of the bird)
Definition:
The wilderness
The Wild and the Epic:
Service’s The Call of the Wild
-Nature as something epic (the poem is an epic ballad, a narrative poem)
-Nature as a wonder (‘naked grandeur’)
-Nature as the unknown, as an adventure (Anaphorical rhetorical questions, the use of the apostrophe ‘you’)
- ‘The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do things’
Etymology:
Conclusion:
FRONTIER, a video game
-Nature as something to tame:
Going hunting, Building houses, Founding cities…
The wilderness : the wild as a myth
as an identity-shaping space
beyond the Frontier

12. The Frontier and the Conquest
From East to West: the founding gestures

13. The Frontier and the Conquest
From East to West – In groups…
Find a title
Describe the picture
Is it east or west?
What episode of the Western expansion does it allude to?
- Conclusion: Relationship to the notion of FRONTIER

14. References
"The First Thanksgiving" (1915), by Jean Louis Gerome Ferris (American painter, ).
George Washington Statue outside the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street
“Across the Continent: 'Westward the Course of Empire Takes it's Way'” (1868), pub. by Currier and Ives, New York, by Frances Flora Bond Palmer - Museum of the City of New York, USA
“Young Frontiersman” by H. David Wright - David Wright Art – Gallatin, Tennessee
“Hostage negotiations” Ashtley D.M.Cooper(Native Am.Art)

15. Thanksgiving CROSSING THE FRONTIER: ENCOUNTERING THE OTHER
The event that Americans commonly call the "First Thanksgiving" was celebrated by the Pilgrims after their first harvest in the New World in This feast lasted three days, and it was attended by 90 Native Americans and 53 Pilgrims. The New England colonists were accustomed to regularly celebrating "thanksgivings"—days of prayer thanking God for blessings such as military victory or the end of a drought. It represented an ideal of peace and the possibility of coexistence between the Native Americans and the newly arrived inhabitants.
CROSSING THE FRONTIER: ENCOUNTERING THE OTHER

16. George Washington
1789 in America: George Washington was elected the first US President. In the year of the French Revolution, Washington proved to be a man of his time, representing its ideas of freedom and justice. In 1787, he had been one of America’s Founding Fathers who drafted the First World’s first written constitution in Philadelphia. The Founding Fathers firmly believed in democracy. The foundation of the United States is built on 3 written documents: the Declaration of Independence of 1776, the Constitution of the United States in 1787 followed by the amendments of 1789, known as The Bill of Rights.
CREATING THE FRONTIERS: BUILDING UP A COUNTY WITH BORDERS

17. Railroads, moving around and building cities
It was 1872, three years after the transcontinental railroad was completed. Data reveals that westward expansion was already changing the country. St. Louis (a Missouri city with a pivotal location and known as "Gateway to the West") had already become one of the wealthiest areas in the United States. Settlers moving west were no longer limited to river or overland travel. They could - and did - depend on steam engines.
Desert was turned into cities with roads and trails.
MOVING THE FRONTIER, REDEFINING THE BORDER: THE ACT OF CONQUEST

18. The Frontiersman

19. An example: ‘The Revenant’ (2015) https://www. youtube. com/watch
-Pioneer, settler, colonist, explorer
-The one who lives on the Frontier
- A hunter carrying a gun; needs for a means of self-protection
-Ideal of the western culture who got familiar with the natives’ customs and hunting techniques
-The one who faces /challenges/blends into the wilderness with his firearm
-Ideal of a man uncorrupted by the evils of civilisation; also a farmer and a trapper
ACTOR OF THE FRONTIER
A brief history of America, Michael Moore

21. The First nations Helpful ally Evil ennemy
-Noble savage myth: Montaigne ( Des Cannibales), Rousseau (Discourse on Inequality Among Men),Châteaubriand (Attala)
-Uncorrupted men living in heaven on Earth before original sin
-Men who fought with the French and the English (Indian Wars)
- Folklore, hunting techniques, traditional weapons (tomahawks)
-Attempt to civilize them
-Unpure, bloody, cannibals:
Revengeful people, Scalping as a ancestral ritual
-Unchristian, Sinful
-Fading, Endangered, Dying
BANNED, PUSHED BACK, FORCED TO MOVE BEYOND THE FRONTIER

22. The Frontier and Spaces and Exchanges
CROSSING THE FRONTIER: ENCOUNTERING THE OTHER
CREATING THE FRONTIERS: BUILDING UP A COUNTY WITH BORDERS
MOVING THE FRONTIER, REDEFINING THE BORDER: THE ACT OF CONQUEST
The Frontiersman: ACTOR OF THE FRONTIER
BANNED, PUSHED BACK, FORCED TO MOVE BEYOND THE FRONTIER
Who/what has an effect on who/what?
Using passive forms , explain how space was shaped by settlers in America -

23. Wind in his hair, Dance with Wolves, 1990
The Frontier as a myth
The myth of Thanksgiving: A founding myth -
The Frontiersman: A hero of the conquest
The myth of the First nations: The Noble Savage myth and the myth of the Savage
Wind in his hair, Dance with Wolves, 1990

24. Homework
h/w: -Pioneers vs Native Americans (Gap fills) -Western expansion from1803: the Manifest Destiny (CE) -Compréhension orale notée The Oregon Trail

25. The Manifest destiny
h/w: Gap fill - Definition

26. Manifest destiny today : The modern ideal of upward expansion
America and colonisation: Avatar (2009) America and the conquest of space: Interstellar (2014)

27. Recycling the myth; Romancing the expansion: Western movies
The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) 
Django (2012)
The Magnificient Seven (2016)

28. Firearms and westward expansion: The instruments which shaped the Frontier
What weapons?
WEAPONS
What does it symbolize?
What use? (Why?)

30. Expressing change & evolutions:

31. Gun culture
westward – hunting – culture – gun – style – self defence – inheritance – glorify – Frontiersman – famously – archetype – militia - survival
Closely related to the ……………… tradition was the frontier tradition with the need for a means of ……………………….. closely associated with the nineteenth century ……………………… expansion and the American frontier. There remains a powerful central elevation of the ………… associated with the …………………… and frontier ethos among the American Gun …………………….. . Though it has not been a necessary part of daily ……………………. for over a century, generations of Americans have continued to embrace and …………………. it as a living ……………… —a permanent element of the nation's …………… and culture. In popular literature, frontier adventure was most ………………………. told by James Fenimore Cooper, who is credited with creating the ………………………… of an 18th-century ……………………….. through such novels as The Last of the Mohicans (1826) and The Deerslayer (1840).

32. Gun culture
Closely related to the militia tradition was the frontier tradition with the need for a means of self-protection closely associated with the nineteenth century westward expansion and the American frontier. There remains a powerful central elevation of the gun associated with the hunting and frontier ethos among the American Gun Culture.
Though it has not been a necessary part of daily survival for over a century, generations of Americans have continued to embrace and glorify it as a living inheritance—a permanent element of the nation's style and culture. In popular literature, frontier adventure was most famously told by James Fenimore Cooper, who is credited with creating the archetype of an 18th-century frontiersman through such novels as The Last of the Mohicans (1826) and The Deerslayer (1840).
Preterit vs present perfect

33. Past
Impact on the present
Americans used to…
Since
For
Not yet
Never
(Still) + present

34. America and guns 1- Why do American people love guns?
CO:
In a nutshell:
CE: 4 pro gun arguments we’re sick of hearing

35. The myth of gun culture Pros Cons More guns equals more homicides
The US is the country which counts the greatest amount of gun deaths in the world
Australia clamped down on gun ownership and the number of gun deaths shrank.
Successful interventions by armed civilians during an assault are very rare
Assault weapons are not needed for hunting or sport.

36. Gun violence
2 – Gun violence: What future for the right to bear a gun? Gun control : fiche vocab Consequences: Las Vegas shootings and ongoing massacres in numbers

37. Anticipation Tâche finale
Debate ! weighing pros and cons - disagreeing
CO: « From my cold dead hands » vs Obama’s speech: Sandy Hook shooting
CO: « Bowling for Columbine » - C. Heston vs M. Moore
h/w: write a letter to Obama