A professor who teaches an American Studies course at the University of Idaho contends that she has her work cut out for her. According to the professor, Idaho's conservative political climate has led to her learning to negotiate. This paper first describes the development of an American Studies core course that began in the 1980s and continues today. She then discusses a course in American culture which was taught for the first time in 2001. The American Studies course, "Interpreting America," developed out of a National Endowment for the Humanities-funded University of Idaho workshop when William Bennett headed the agency in the 1980s and funding supported the "great ideas" tradition. In all the units of the course, she consciously includes a wide array of perspectives. However, she has mixed feelings about teaching such foundational readings as Frederick Jackson Turner's "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," a text now considered both inaccurate and culturally prejudiced. The second new course was designed as a freshman core discovery course, and naming the course and deciding on its themes were difficult enough even before the course began, since the course was envisaged as having a multicultural approach. She also describes some American Studies assignments and notes that the new freshman course has a service-learning component. (NKA)