Directions: Use the themes, questions and video clips below to teach and learn with portions of C-SPAN's American Writers program featuring James Fenimore Cooper and The Last of the Mohicans. Link to the complete video clip list to identify clip descriptions and to create your own lessons. Each theme contains questions and video clips appropriate for varying grade levels.
Lesson Credit: Curriculum Advisory Team member, Koleta Tilson.

1. What is the frontier? What did it mean to different groups of people?
2. Who owned the land? How did different groups conceptualize land ownership?
3. How were disputes about its use and ownership settled? Identify different ways was this competition manifested.
4. What lure did the frontier hold? How did the land satisfy people's practical needs? How did it appeal to them psychologically and spiritually?
5. Describe specific examples that illustrate the attraction of and conflicts over the frontier from Cooper's own personal life and from his stories.
6. Keeping in mind the potential pitfalls and rewards of the American frontier, discuss the struggles and strategies of individuals and groups who sought to conquer and control the wilderness.

1. Why did James Fenimore Cooper write novels?
2. What conditions in his own personal life enabled him to write?
3. Who read this book? What perceptions did people in America have about the book?
4. What perceptions did people abroad have about the book?
5. What conflict lies at the center of The Last of the Mohicans? What classic literary themes are employed?
6. What elements of Cooper's stories still resonate with readers and movie-goers today? Identify and describe some examples of how the themes and conflicts Cooper employed persist in contemporary stories.

1. At what point in the nation's history was James Fenimore Cooper writing? What events, conditions, people and policies had helped shape an American identity up to this point?
2. How did Cooper's writing contribute to the defining of the culture? How was Cooper's work uniquely "American"?
3. What American influences had an impact on Cooper's writing?
4. Examine the ways Cooper's stories might have foreshadowed America's future.
5. Do you think it is possible for literary authors, such as Cooper, to influence history or is this possible only for political writers such as Thomas Paine? Do writers influence a national identity through reflecting as well as defining?
6. What writers (or other artists) today contribute to our sense of a national identity?