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A conversation with historian James Tejani about their book A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth: The Making of the Port of Los Angeles—and America (W. W. Norton, 2024) James Tejani is associate professor of history at California Polytechnic State University. He holds a BAs in history and political science from the University of California, San Diego, and a Ph.D. in History from Columbia University. His first book, A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth: The Making of the Port of Los Angeles—and America (W. W. Norton, 2024). A decade ago he published two articles from this project, both of which won awards. His Southern California Quarterly article, “Dredging the Future: The Destruction of Coastal Estuaries and the Creation of Metropolitan Los Angeles, 1858-1913,” won the Doyce B. Nunis Jr. Award from the Historical Society of Southern California and the Ray Allen Billington Prize from the Western History Association, and his Western Historical Quarterly article, “Harbor Lines: Connecting the Histories of Borderlands and Pacific Imperialism in the Making of the Port of Los Angeles, 1858-1908,” earned an honorable mention for the Alice Hamilton Prize from the American Society for Environmental History. The Writing Westward Podcast is produced and hosted by Prof. Brenden W. Rensink (www.bwrensink.org) for the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University (reddcenter.byu.edu). Subscribe to the Writing Westward Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, and other podcast distribution apps and platforms. Follow the BYU Redd Center and the Writing Westward Podcast on Facebook or Twitter or get more information @ https://www.writingwestward.org. Theme music by Micah Dahl Anderson @ www.micahdahlanderson.com
A conversation with historian Holly Miowak Guise about her book, Alaska Native Resilience: Voices from World War II (University of Washington Press, Indigenous Confluences Series, 2024). Dr. Guise is Assistant Professor of History at the University of New Mexico and holds a BA in Native American Studies from Stanford University and an MA and PhD in History from Yale University. She is the author of multiple books chapters and a 2022 article in the WHQ, “Who is Doctor Bauer?: Rematriating a Censored Story on Internment, Wardship, and Sexual Violence in Wartime Alaska, 1941-1944, " which won the Western History Association's Arrell M. Gibson Award for the best essay of the year on the history of Native Americans, Jensen-Miller Award for the best article in the field of women and gender in the North American West, Vicki L. Ruiz Award for best article on race in the North American West, and Oscar O. Winther Award for best article published in the Western Historical Quarterly (2023), and the Western Association of Women Historians Judith Lee Ridge Prize for best article in the field of history (2024). In 2022 she received both an American Council of Learned Societies and Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship to aid in her research that culminated in her book. Check out the book's companion website, ww2alaska.com to sample some of the oral history interviews that formed a foundation for her work. The Writing Westward Podcast is produced and hosted by Prof. Brenden W. Rensink (www.bwrensink.org) for the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University and hosted by. Subscribe to the Writing Westward Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, and other podcast distribution apps and platforms. Follow the BYU Redd Center and the Writing Westward Podcast on Facebook or Twitter or get more information @ https://www.writingwestward.org. Theme music by Micah Dahl Anderson @ www.micahdahlanderson.com
For this episode of the Matrix Podcast, J.T. Jamieson, a 2022-2023 Matrix Communications Scholar, interviewed Bernadette Pérez, Assistant Professor of History at UC Berkeley. Pérez is a historian of the United States who specializes in the histories of Latinx and Indigenous peoples in the West. Her current research focuses on migrant sugar beet workers in Colorado, and explores intersections between race, environment, labor, migration, and colonialism in the post Civil War. Before joining the faculty at Berkeley, Pérez was the Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow in Race and Ethnicity Studies at the Princeton Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts from 2017-2020, where she taught courses in History and American Studies. She has received fellowships and awards from the Mellon Foundation, the Council on Library and Information Resources, the Organization of American Historians, and the Western History Association. In 2018, her dissertation won the W. Turrentine Jackson Dissertation Award from the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association and the Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Immigration and Ethnic History Society. A transcript of this interview is availabile at: https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/bernadette-perez/.
For too long, the history we've considered “America's” has really just been the history of European conquest. Ned Blackhawk argues that there is no American history without its first, indigenous inhabitants. Blackhawk is a Professor of History and American Studies at Yale. He is the author of “Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the early American West,” a study of the American Great Basin that garnered half a dozen professional prizes, including the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize from the Organization of American Historians. In addition to serving in professional associations and on the editorial boards of American Quarterly and Ethnohistory, Blackhawk has led the establishment of two fellowships, one for American Indian Students to attend the Western History Association's annual conference, the other for doctoral students working on American Indian Studies dissertations at Yale named after Henry Roe Cloud.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On today's episode of Speaking Out of Place, we talk with Professor J. Kēhaulani Kauanui and Professor Sunaina Maira, two people involved in the 2013 effort to get the American Studies Association in support for the academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions, called for by Palestinian civil society groups in 2004. Both Kauanui and Maira were named defendants in a lawsuit brought by pro-Israel members of the ASA. Recently, the court has exonerated the defendants of all charges. We hear about the lawsuit, and the organizing by scholars in the ASA and in the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) that led to the historic boycott resolution, the first by a major US academic association. We spend a great deal of the program talking about the significance of the struggle in solidarity with Palestinian academics and students, and the meaning of this legal victory.J. Kēhaulani Kauanui is Professor of American Studies and affiliate faculty in Anthropology at Wesleyan University, where she teaches courses in critical Indigenous studies, settler colonial studies, critical race studies, and anarchist studies. She is the author of Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity (Duke University Press 2008); Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty: Land, Sex, and the Colonial Politics of State Nationalism (Duke University Press 2018); and editor of Speaking of Indigenous Politics: Conversations with Activists, Scholars, and Tribal Leaders (University of Minnesota Press 2018). Kauanui is one of the six co-founders of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association. And she is the recipient of the Western History Association's 2022 American Indian History Lifetime Achievement Award. Sunaina Maira is Professor of Asian American Studies at UC Davis and a founding organizer of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI). She does research in Arab and South Asian American studies and is the author of several books related to the Palestine justice movement such as The 9/11 Generation: Youth, Rights, and Solidarity in the War on Terror and Boycott!: The Academy and Justice for Palestine. Her book based on ethnographic research in Palestine is Jil [Generation] Oslo: Palestinian Hip Hop, Youth Culture, and the Youth Movement. Maira launched a section on West Asian American Studies in the Association for Asian American Studies has been faculty advisor of SJP and organizer with Faculty for Justice in Palestine.
Date: June 27, 2022 (Season 4, Episode 14: 59 minutes & 21 seconds long). Click Here for the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here. This episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood and Chelsey Zamir, with help (sound engineering and post-production editing) from Jason Powers from the Utah State Library Recording Studio.Dr. Gregory E. Smoak, longtime director of the American West Center (Univ. of Utah) and associate professor of history, discusses with SYP host Brad Westwood his 2021 book entitled, “Western Lands, Western Voices: Essays on Public History in the American West,” (The University of Utah Press). Smoak describes the U of U American West Center, and its 50 plus years of public facing history work. Smoak also defines, in this series of essays, what makes up “Public History.” The essays explore the American West and the academic or formal interpretation of it. The book is a wonderful collection of defensible and peer-reviewed writing on public history. The collection aspires to address the questions most perplexing to Smoak's history colleagues: what makes public history “public” and what makes a “public historian?” Sometimes, public history is wrongly conflated with “popular history,” often reducing it to a matter of audience, and associating it with a “lesser” type of history. The essays address questions and ideas via collaboration with many historians' contributions to the collection. This book, Smoak hopes, will educate the public on what public history really is in hopes of inspiring a positive effect on communities. What is the American West Center? Founded in 1964, it's one of the oldest regional studies centers in the country in the pursuit of western history. It was founded by two professors Russ Mortensen and C. Gregory Crampton as a partnership with the Western History Association to produce a second journal/magazine on the American West. That endeavor only lasted for a couple of years, which left the American West Center (hereafter AWC) needing a solid reason for existing which was filled by the tobacco industry heiress, Doris Duke, who in 1967, gave sizable financial grants to several universities including the AWC, to conduct hundreds of oral histories with Native Americans across the Intermountain West. The AWC became the manager of this massive oral history undertaking, available here. Today, the AWC focuses on oral history projects; provides research assistantship positions to students during their masters and doctoral studies; and conducts contracted research projects related to Native American treaties, environmental, architectural and water rights history. Work completed by the AWC is available to the public via the Marriott Library, Special Collections Department. Bio: Dr. Gregory E. Smoak is an associate professor of history at the University of Utah, the director of the American West Center since 2012, and 2021 president of the National Council on Public History. Dr. Smoak focuses on public history, Native American history, and American West history with special interest on water rights. Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov.
Today we have an interview with Dr. Iris H. W. Engstrand. is a native Californian and indispensable historian of Southern California . Engstrand’s academic honors include USD’s distinguished University Professorship; the Davies Award for Faculty Achievement; Awards of Merit from the San Diego, Southern California, and California Historical Societies, Western History Association, and Orange Coast College; fellowships from the Fulbright Commission, American Philosophical Society and Huntington Library; and the California Design Award in Historic Preservation. She is a trustee of the San Diego Natural History Museum and the San Diego Maritime Museum, past president of the American Historical Association Pacific Coast Branch and of the Western History Association. Engstrand has lived and traveled extensively in Spain and Mexico and lectures widely in both English and Spanish. She has degrees in history, with maors and minors in the fields of California, Mexico, Latin America and the Spanish Southwest history, biology and Spanish Engstrand has recently been awarded the prestigious medal of the Order of Isabel la Catolica (Isabel the Catholic -- ruler of Spain in 1492) by Juan Carlos, King of Spain, for outstanding contributions to the history of Spain in the Americas. Our Patreon Page
On this episode I chatted with Patti & Sarah about their recent project "This Land is Her Land" and more about Oklahoma History and the women who have impacted it along the way. Patti Loughlin is Professor of History at the University of Central Oklahoma. Her publications include Hidden Treasures of the American West: Muriel H. Wright, Angie Debo and Alice Marriott (University of New Mexico Press, 2005), Building Traditions, Educating Generations: A History of the University of Central Oklahoma (Oklahoma Heritage Association, 2007) with Bob Burke, and Main Street Oklahoma: An American Story (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013) coedited by Linda Reese. Her book Angie Debo, Daughter of the Prairie(Oklahoma City: Oklahoma Hall of Fame, 2017), received the 2018 Oklahoma Book Award for children/young adult. Patti serves on the Oklahoma Historical Society board of directors, and remains active in the Coalition for Western Women's History and the Western History Association. Sarah Eppler Janda is Professor of History at Cameron University in Lawton, Oklahoma. She is the author of Beloved Women: The Political Lives of LaDonna Harris and Wilma Mankiller (Northern Illinois University Press, 2007), Pride of the Wichitas: A History of Cameron University (Oklahoma Heritage Association, 2010), and Prairie Power: Student Activism, Counterculture, and Backlash in Oklahoma, 1962–1972 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018). She is an active member of the Coalition for Western Women's History, the Western History Association, and the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians. Janda and Loughlin coedited This Land is Herland: Gendered Activism in Oklahoma from the 1870s to the 2010s (University of Oklahoma Press, 2021). Currently they are writing an Oklahoma history textbook for statewide adoption in high schools for the University of Oklahoma Press. Huge shout out to my sponsors for their continued support. The Oklahoma Hall of Fame. Telling Oklahoma's story through its people since 1927. For more information go to www.oklahomahof.com and www.instagram.com/oklahomahof RCB Bank. Get rates as low as 1.79% APR on new, used and refinanced cars, boats, campers and ATVs. Visit www.RCBbank.com or come into any of our 40 locations across Oklahoma to learn more. Until August 31st. Rate and financing with approved credit. Restrictions Apply. #thisisoklahoma
Today, we have an interview with Susan Lee Johnson. Susan Lee Johnson holds the inaugural Harry Reid Endowed Chair for the History of the Intermountain West. In 2020, Johnson was named President-Elect of the Western History Association. A historian of western North America and its borderlands, Johnson specializes in the study of gender; of race, ethnicity, and indigeneity; and of desire and embodiment. Johnson works primarily in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but teaches and takes interest in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as well. Johnson’s scholarship has focused on relations of power in the North American West both as a place of lived experience and as an imagined space, exploring these themes in three book projects: Writing Kit Carson: Fallen Heroes in a Changing West (University of North Carolina Press 2020), Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush (Norton 2000), and a new project, tentatively titled “The Trail the Slaves Made,” a place-based history of how the Santa Fe Trail connected slaveries and emancipations in nineteenth-century North America: chattel slavery and its demise in the East, and, in the West, captive-taking and coerced labor, which died a different death. Our conversation wandered the Gold Rush, to Kit Carson to favorite western films. Links: Susan's Faculty Page Susan's Books
Paul Andrew Hutton is an American cultural and military historian, an award-winning author, documentary writer, and television personality. He is also Distinguished Professor of History at the University of New Mexico, a former executive director of the Western History Association, and a past president of Western Writers of America. He was born in Frankfurt, Germany, and adopted as an infant by an American Air Force couple. Raised around the world--in Germany, England, and Taiwan--as well as in Texas and Indiana, he attended college at Indiana University. He received his doctorate in American history in 1981, and has taught at both Utah State University (1977-1985) and at the University of New Mexico (1985-present). He is a six time winner of the Western Writers of America Spur Award and a six time winner of the Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. His first book, Phil Sheridan and His Army received the Billington Prize from the Organization of American Historians, the Evans Biography Award, and the Spur Award. He is also the editor of Western Heritage (2011), Roundup (2010), Frontier and Region (1997), The Custer Reader(1992), Soldiers West (1987), and the ten-volume Bantam Eyewitness to the Civil War series (1991-93). He has appeared in over 300 television shows on the History Channel, Discovery, PBS, NBC, CBS, BBC, Fox and other networks and has written a dozen documentaries for television and state and national parks. He also served as historical consultant on such Hollywood films as The Missing (2003), Cowboys and Aliens (2010), and Jane Got a Gun(2016) and even has a speaking role in David Zucker's Naked Gun 33 1/3 (1994). He has five children--Laura, Caitlin, Lorena, Chelsea, and Paul Andy--and lives in Albuquerque with wife Tracy and pups Bucky O'Neil and Annie Oakley. His latest book is The Apache Wars from Crown Publishing Group. Winner of the Western Writers of America Spur Award, The Apache Wars Winner of the Best Nonfiction Book Award from True West magazine, The Apache Wars --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jeffrey-schreckler/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jeffrey-schreckler/support
In August 1795, Apaches wiped out two Spanish patrols In the desert borderlands of the what is today the American Southwest and Mexican north. This attack ended what had bene an uneasy peace between various Apache groups and the Spanish Empire. In A Bad Peace and A Good War: Spain and the Mescalero Apache Uprising of 1795-1799 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018), Mark Santiago (the recently retired Director of the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum) examines why this peace broke down, as well as what the ensuing conflict looked like on the ground. Many historians argue that the 1790s were a period of peace in the Spanish/Apache borderlands, and Santiago presents an alternate view: that sustained conflict was the norm in this region during the twilight of the Spanish Empire. A Bad Peace and a Good War is remarkably detailed and well-researched and won the 2019 Robert Utley prize in military history from the Western History Association. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In August 1795, Apaches wiped out two Spanish patrols In the desert borderlands of the what is today the American Southwest and Mexican north. This attack ended what had bene an uneasy peace between various Apache groups and the Spanish Empire. In A Bad Peace and A Good War: Spain and the Mescalero Apache Uprising of 1795-1799 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018), Mark Santiago (the recently retired Director of the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum) examines why this peace broke down, as well as what the ensuing conflict looked like on the ground. Many historians argue that the 1790s were a period of peace in the Spanish/Apache borderlands, and Santiago presents an alternate view: that sustained conflict was the norm in this region during the twilight of the Spanish Empire. A Bad Peace and a Good War is remarkably detailed and well-researched and won the 2019 Robert Utley prize in military history from the Western History Association. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In August 1795, Apaches wiped out two Spanish patrols In the desert borderlands of the what is today the American Southwest and Mexican north. This attack ended what had bene an uneasy peace between various Apache groups and the Spanish Empire. In A Bad Peace and A Good War: Spain and the Mescalero Apache Uprising of 1795-1799 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018), Mark Santiago (the recently retired Director of the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum) examines why this peace broke down, as well as what the ensuing conflict looked like on the ground. Many historians argue that the 1790s were a period of peace in the Spanish/Apache borderlands, and Santiago presents an alternate view: that sustained conflict was the norm in this region during the twilight of the Spanish Empire. A Bad Peace and a Good War is remarkably detailed and well-researched and won the 2019 Robert Utley prize in military history from the Western History Association. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In August 1795, Apaches wiped out two Spanish patrols In the desert borderlands of the what is today the American Southwest and Mexican north. This attack ended what had bene an uneasy peace between various Apache groups and the Spanish Empire. In A Bad Peace and A Good War: Spain and the Mescalero Apache Uprising of 1795-1799 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018), Mark Santiago (the recently retired Director of the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum) examines why this peace broke down, as well as what the ensuing conflict looked like on the ground. Many historians argue that the 1790s were a period of peace in the Spanish/Apache borderlands, and Santiago presents an alternate view: that sustained conflict was the norm in this region during the twilight of the Spanish Empire. A Bad Peace and a Good War is remarkably detailed and well-researched and won the 2019 Robert Utley prize in military history from the Western History Association. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In August 1795, Apaches wiped out two Spanish patrols In the desert borderlands of the what is today the American Southwest and Mexican north. This attack ended what had bene an uneasy peace between various Apache groups and the Spanish Empire. In A Bad Peace and A Good War: Spain and the Mescalero Apache Uprising of 1795-1799 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018), Mark Santiago (the recently retired Director of the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum) examines why this peace broke down, as well as what the ensuing conflict looked like on the ground. Many historians argue that the 1790s were a period of peace in the Spanish/Apache borderlands, and Santiago presents an alternate view: that sustained conflict was the norm in this region during the twilight of the Spanish Empire. A Bad Peace and a Good War is remarkably detailed and well-researched and won the 2019 Robert Utley prize in military history from the Western History Association. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In August 1795, Apaches wiped out two Spanish patrols In the desert borderlands of the what is today the American Southwest and Mexican north. This attack ended what had bene an uneasy peace between various Apache groups and the Spanish Empire. In A Bad Peace and A Good War: Spain and the Mescalero Apache Uprising of 1795-1799 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018), Mark Santiago (the recently retired Director of the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum) examines why this peace broke down, as well as what the ensuing conflict looked like on the ground. Many historians argue that the 1790s were a period of peace in the Spanish/Apache borderlands, and Santiago presents an alternate view: that sustained conflict was the norm in this region during the twilight of the Spanish Empire. A Bad Peace and a Good War is remarkably detailed and well-researched and won the 2019 Robert Utley prize in military history from the Western History Association. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In August 1795, Apaches wiped out two Spanish patrols In the desert borderlands of the what is today the American Southwest and Mexican north. This attack ended what had bene an uneasy peace between various Apache groups and the Spanish Empire. In A Bad Peace and A Good War: Spain and the Mescalero Apache Uprising of 1795-1799 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018), Mark Santiago (the recently retired Director of the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum) examines why this peace broke down, as well as what the ensuing conflict looked like on the ground. Many historians argue that the 1790s were a period of peace in the Spanish/Apache borderlands, and Santiago presents an alternate view: that sustained conflict was the norm in this region during the twilight of the Spanish Empire. A Bad Peace and a Good War is remarkably detailed and well-researched and won the 2019 Robert Utley prize in military history from the Western History Association. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In August 1795, Apaches wiped out two Spanish patrols In the desert borderlands of the what is today the American Southwest and Mexican north. This attack ended what had bene an uneasy peace between various Apache groups and the Spanish Empire. In A Bad Peace and A Good War: Spain and the Mescalero Apache Uprising of 1795-1799 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018), Mark Santiago (the recently retired Director of the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum) examines why this peace broke down, as well as what the ensuing conflict looked like on the ground. Many historians argue that the 1790s were a period of peace in the Spanish/Apache borderlands, and Santiago presents an alternate view: that sustained conflict was the norm in this region during the twilight of the Spanish Empire. A Bad Peace and a Good War is remarkably detailed and well-researched and won the 2019 Robert Utley prize in military history from the Western History Association. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sherry L. Smith is University Distinguished Professor of History (Emerita) at Southern Methodist University. A historian of the American West and Native America, Smith's other books include Hippies, Indians, and the Fight for Red Power and Reimagining Indians: Native Americans through Anglo Eyes, 1880–1940, both published by Oxford University Press. She is a former president of the Western History Association and received the Los Angeles Times Distinguished Fellowship at the Huntington Library, which supported research for Bohemians West. Smith has also been honored with fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Foundation, and Yale University's Beinecke Library. She lives in Moose, Wyoming, and Pasadena, California. Sherry Smith's lates book "Bohemians West: Free Love, Family and Radicals in Twentieth Century America." creates the experiences of the twentieth century radicals and reformers fighting for a new America, seeking change not only in labor picket lines and at women’s suffrage rallies but also in homes and bedrooms. In the thick of this heady milieu were Sara Bard Field and Charles Erskine Scott Wood, two aspiring poets and political activists whose love story uncovers a potent emotional world underneath this transformative time. Self-declared pioneers in free love, Sara and Erskine exchanged hundreds of letters that charted a new kind of romantic relationship, and their personal pursuits frequently came into contact with their deeply engaged political lives. Published by Heyday Books. Thank you, Sherry!
The political West is far from monochrome, writes Walter Nugent in Color Coded: Party Politics in the American West, 1950–2016 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018). Over the last half century and more, most of the states in the West have voted both Democratic and Republican on the national level, with only a handful remaining consistently with one party over that whole period (and even those, such as South Dakota, have significant exceptions). Nugent, professor emeritus of history at the University of Notre Dame and past president of the Western History Association, provides a detailed analysis of each Western state’s modern political history. In doing so, he explains that, while rarely was there a single factor that determined how a state would vote for its senators, governor, or president, crucial factor such as demographic change, state-level party apparatus, and change-making individuals all play vital roles. Whether a state went for the Democratic or Republican candidate was a decision that, in Nugent’s words, often sat balanced “on the edge of a knife.” Color Coded is an in-depth look at how Western politics can often defy expectations, and underscores how the red/blue dichotomy is often unsuitable for a region as diverse as the American West. Stephen Hausmann is an Assistant Professor of US History at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. He teaches courses on modern US history, environmental history, and Indigenous history and is currently working on his book manuscript, an environmental history of the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The political West is far from monochrome, writes Walter Nugent in Color Coded: Party Politics in the American West, 1950–2016 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018). Over the last half century and more, most of the states in the West have voted both Democratic and Republican on the national level, with only a handful remaining consistently with one party over that whole period (and even those, such as South Dakota, have significant exceptions). Nugent, professor emeritus of history at the University of Notre Dame and past president of the Western History Association, provides a detailed analysis of each Western state’s modern political history. In doing so, he explains that, while rarely was there a single factor that determined how a state would vote for its senators, governor, or president, crucial factor such as demographic change, state-level party apparatus, and change-making individuals all play vital roles. Whether a state went for the Democratic or Republican candidate was a decision that, in Nugent’s words, often sat balanced “on the edge of a knife.” Color Coded is an in-depth look at how Western politics can often defy expectations, and underscores how the red/blue dichotomy is often unsuitable for a region as diverse as the American West. Stephen Hausmann is an Assistant Professor of US History at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. He teaches courses on modern US history, environmental history, and Indigenous history and is currently working on his book manuscript, an environmental history of the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The political West is far from monochrome, writes Walter Nugent in Color Coded: Party Politics in the American West, 1950–2016 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018). Over the last half century and more, most of the states in the West have voted both Democratic and Republican on the national level, with only a handful remaining consistently with one party over that whole period (and even those, such as South Dakota, have significant exceptions). Nugent, professor emeritus of history at the University of Notre Dame and past president of the Western History Association, provides a detailed analysis of each Western state’s modern political history. In doing so, he explains that, while rarely was there a single factor that determined how a state would vote for its senators, governor, or president, crucial factor such as demographic change, state-level party apparatus, and change-making individuals all play vital roles. Whether a state went for the Democratic or Republican candidate was a decision that, in Nugent’s words, often sat balanced “on the edge of a knife.” Color Coded is an in-depth look at how Western politics can often defy expectations, and underscores how the red/blue dichotomy is often unsuitable for a region as diverse as the American West. Stephen Hausmann is an Assistant Professor of US History at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. He teaches courses on modern US history, environmental history, and Indigenous history and is currently working on his book manuscript, an environmental history of the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The political West is far from monochrome, writes Walter Nugent in Color Coded: Party Politics in the American West, 1950–2016 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018). Over the last half century and more, most of the states in the West have voted both Democratic and Republican on the national level, with only a handful remaining consistently with one party over that whole period (and even those, such as South Dakota, have significant exceptions). Nugent, professor emeritus of history at the University of Notre Dame and past president of the Western History Association, provides a detailed analysis of each Western state’s modern political history. In doing so, he explains that, while rarely was there a single factor that determined how a state would vote for its senators, governor, or president, crucial factor such as demographic change, state-level party apparatus, and change-making individuals all play vital roles. Whether a state went for the Democratic or Republican candidate was a decision that, in Nugent’s words, often sat balanced “on the edge of a knife.” Color Coded is an in-depth look at how Western politics can often defy expectations, and underscores how the red/blue dichotomy is often unsuitable for a region as diverse as the American West. Stephen Hausmann is an Assistant Professor of US History at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. He teaches courses on modern US history, environmental history, and Indigenous history and is currently working on his book manuscript, an environmental history of the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The political West is far from monochrome, writes Walter Nugent in Color Coded: Party Politics in the American West, 1950–2016 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018). Over the last half century and more, most of the states in the West have voted both Democratic and Republican on the national level, with only a handful remaining consistently with one party over that whole period (and even those, such as South Dakota, have significant exceptions). Nugent, professor emeritus of history at the University of Notre Dame and past president of the Western History Association, provides a detailed analysis of each Western state’s modern political history. In doing so, he explains that, while rarely was there a single factor that determined how a state would vote for its senators, governor, or president, crucial factor such as demographic change, state-level party apparatus, and change-making individuals all play vital roles. Whether a state went for the Democratic or Republican candidate was a decision that, in Nugent’s words, often sat balanced “on the edge of a knife.” Color Coded is an in-depth look at how Western politics can often defy expectations, and underscores how the red/blue dichotomy is often unsuitable for a region as diverse as the American West. Stephen Hausmann is an Assistant Professor of US History at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. He teaches courses on modern US history, environmental history, and Indigenous history and is currently working on his book manuscript, an environmental history of the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The political West is far from monochrome, writes Walter Nugent in Color Coded: Party Politics in the American West, 1950–2016 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018). Over the last half century and more, most of the states in the West have voted both Democratic and Republican on the national level, with only a handful remaining consistently with one party over that whole period (and even those, such as South Dakota, have significant exceptions). Nugent, professor emeritus of history at the University of Notre Dame and past president of the Western History Association, provides a detailed analysis of each Western state’s modern political history. In doing so, he explains that, while rarely was there a single factor that determined how a state would vote for its senators, governor, or president, crucial factor such as demographic change, state-level party apparatus, and change-making individuals all play vital roles. Whether a state went for the Democratic or Republican candidate was a decision that, in Nugent’s words, often sat balanced “on the edge of a knife.” Color Coded is an in-depth look at how Western politics can often defy expectations, and underscores how the red/blue dichotomy is often unsuitable for a region as diverse as the American West. Stephen Hausmann is an Assistant Professor of US History at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. He teaches courses on modern US history, environmental history, and Indigenous history and is currently working on his book manuscript, an environmental history of the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In America's West: A History, 1890-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), David M. Wrobel describes a sixty year period of remarkable change for the vast region. By focusing on politics, demography, race, and cultural change, Wrobel argues that while the West was colonized space, it was also a crucible for the broader changes in American society during the first half of the twentieth century. America's West is a concise synthesis of a period often neglected by historians of the West, as the United States emerged as an international imperial power. Wrobel focuses on several important actors, including Theodore Roosevelt, and also connect the history of politicians and leaders to everyday Americans, immigrants, and Native people. America's West is evidence that the American West is still a unique region worthy of its rich legacy of scholarship. Dr. David Wrobel holds the Merrick Chair in Western American History and is the David L. Boren Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma, where he also serves as the Dean of Arts and Sciences. He is an award winning historian of the West and will begin a tenure as president of the Western History Association in 2019. Stephen Hausmann is a doctoral candidate at Temple University and Visiting Instructor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently writing his dissertation, a history of race and the environment in the Black Hills and surrounding northern plains region of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana.
In America's West: A History, 1890-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), David M. Wrobel describes a sixty year period of remarkable change for the vast region. By focusing on politics, demography, race, and cultural change, Wrobel argues that while the West was colonized space, it was also a crucible for the broader changes in American society during the first half of the twentieth century. America’s West is a concise synthesis of a period often neglected by historians of the West, as the United States emerged as an international imperial power. Wrobel focuses on several important actors, including Theodore Roosevelt, and also connect the history of politicians and leaders to everyday Americans, immigrants, and Native people. America’s West is evidence that the American West is still a unique region worthy of its rich legacy of scholarship. Dr. David Wrobel holds the Merrick Chair in Western American History and is the David L. Boren Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma, where he also serves as the Dean of Arts and Sciences. He is an award winning historian of the West and will begin a tenure as president of the Western History Association in 2019. Stephen Hausmann is a doctoral candidate at Temple University and Visiting Instructor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently writing his dissertation, a history of race and the environment in the Black Hills and surrounding northern plains region of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In America's West: A History, 1890-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), David M. Wrobel describes a sixty year period of remarkable change for the vast region. By focusing on politics, demography, race, and cultural change, Wrobel argues that while the West was colonized space, it was also a crucible for the broader changes in American society during the first half of the twentieth century. America’s West is a concise synthesis of a period often neglected by historians of the West, as the United States emerged as an international imperial power. Wrobel focuses on several important actors, including Theodore Roosevelt, and also connect the history of politicians and leaders to everyday Americans, immigrants, and Native people. America’s West is evidence that the American West is still a unique region worthy of its rich legacy of scholarship. Dr. David Wrobel holds the Merrick Chair in Western American History and is the David L. Boren Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma, where he also serves as the Dean of Arts and Sciences. He is an award winning historian of the West and will begin a tenure as president of the Western History Association in 2019. Stephen Hausmann is a doctoral candidate at Temple University and Visiting Instructor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently writing his dissertation, a history of race and the environment in the Black Hills and surrounding northern plains region of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In America's West: A History, 1890-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), David M. Wrobel describes a sixty year period of remarkable change for the vast region. By focusing on politics, demography, race, and cultural change, Wrobel argues that while the West was colonized space, it was also a crucible for the broader changes in American society during the first half of the twentieth century. America’s West is a concise synthesis of a period often neglected by historians of the West, as the United States emerged as an international imperial power. Wrobel focuses on several important actors, including Theodore Roosevelt, and also connect the history of politicians and leaders to everyday Americans, immigrants, and Native people. America’s West is evidence that the American West is still a unique region worthy of its rich legacy of scholarship. Dr. David Wrobel holds the Merrick Chair in Western American History and is the David L. Boren Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma, where he also serves as the Dean of Arts and Sciences. He is an award winning historian of the West and will begin a tenure as president of the Western History Association in 2019. Stephen Hausmann is a doctoral candidate at Temple University and Visiting Instructor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently writing his dissertation, a history of race and the environment in the Black Hills and surrounding northern plains region of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In America's West: A History, 1890-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), David M. Wrobel describes a sixty year period of remarkable change for the vast region. By focusing on politics, demography, race, and cultural change, Wrobel argues that while the West was colonized space, it was also a crucible for the broader changes in American society during the first half of the twentieth century. America’s West is a concise synthesis of a period often neglected by historians of the West, as the United States emerged as an international imperial power. Wrobel focuses on several important actors, including Theodore Roosevelt, and also connect the history of politicians and leaders to everyday Americans, immigrants, and Native people. America’s West is evidence that the American West is still a unique region worthy of its rich legacy of scholarship. Dr. David Wrobel holds the Merrick Chair in Western American History and is the David L. Boren Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma, where he also serves as the Dean of Arts and Sciences. He is an award winning historian of the West and will begin a tenure as president of the Western History Association in 2019. Stephen Hausmann is a doctoral candidate at Temple University and Visiting Instructor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently writing his dissertation, a history of race and the environment in the Black Hills and surrounding northern plains region of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The secession of Texas from Mexico was a dry run for the slaveholder's republic of the Confederate States of America, argues Andrew Torget in Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850(University of North Carolina Press, 2015). Torget, the University Distinguished Teaching Professor of history at the University of North Texas (and the Guinness World Record holder for longest history lesson), covers a pivotal swath of history in the American southwest. During the antebellum period, the Texas borderlands transitioned from Comanche, to Mexican, to Texan, to American territory. Slavery, Torget argues, was a crucial political and social institution each step of the way, and acted as a wedge which drove the United States apart and into Civil War. The region's unique climate made plantation cotton cultivation profitable, and in turn shaped the history of an entire continent. Seeds of Empire won several awards in 2016, including the David J. Weber – Clements Center for Best Non-fiction Book on Southwestern America from the Western History Association. Stephen Hausmann is a doctoral candidate at Temple University and Visiting Instructor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently writing his dissertation, a history of race and the environment in the Black Hills and surrounding northern plains region of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana.
The secession of Texas from Mexico was a dry run for the slaveholder’s republic of the Confederate States of America, argues Andrew Torget in Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850(University of North Carolina Press, 2015). Torget, the University Distinguished Teaching Professor of history at the University of North Texas (and the Guinness World Record holder for longest history lesson), covers a pivotal swath of history in the American southwest. During the antebellum period, the Texas borderlands transitioned from Comanche, to Mexican, to Texan, to American territory. Slavery, Torget argues, was a crucial political and social institution each step of the way, and acted as a wedge which drove the United States apart and into Civil War. The region’s unique climate made plantation cotton cultivation profitable, and in turn shaped the history of an entire continent. Seeds of Empire won several awards in 2016, including the David J. Weber – Clements Center for Best Non-fiction Book on Southwestern America from the Western History Association. Stephen Hausmann is a doctoral candidate at Temple University and Visiting Instructor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently writing his dissertation, a history of race and the environment in the Black Hills and surrounding northern plains region of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The secession of Texas from Mexico was a dry run for the slaveholder’s republic of the Confederate States of America, argues Andrew Torget in Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850(University of North Carolina Press, 2015). Torget, the University Distinguished Teaching Professor of history at the University of North Texas (and the Guinness World Record holder for longest history lesson), covers a pivotal swath of history in the American southwest. During the antebellum period, the Texas borderlands transitioned from Comanche, to Mexican, to Texan, to American territory. Slavery, Torget argues, was a crucial political and social institution each step of the way, and acted as a wedge which drove the United States apart and into Civil War. The region’s unique climate made plantation cotton cultivation profitable, and in turn shaped the history of an entire continent. Seeds of Empire won several awards in 2016, including the David J. Weber – Clements Center for Best Non-fiction Book on Southwestern America from the Western History Association. Stephen Hausmann is a doctoral candidate at Temple University and Visiting Instructor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently writing his dissertation, a history of race and the environment in the Black Hills and surrounding northern plains region of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The secession of Texas from Mexico was a dry run for the slaveholder’s republic of the Confederate States of America, argues Andrew Torget in Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850(University of North Carolina Press, 2015). Torget, the University Distinguished Teaching Professor of history at the University of North Texas (and the Guinness World Record holder for longest history lesson), covers a pivotal swath of history in the American southwest. During the antebellum period, the Texas borderlands transitioned from Comanche, to Mexican, to Texan, to American territory. Slavery, Torget argues, was a crucial political and social institution each step of the way, and acted as a wedge which drove the United States apart and into Civil War. The region’s unique climate made plantation cotton cultivation profitable, and in turn shaped the history of an entire continent. Seeds of Empire won several awards in 2016, including the David J. Weber – Clements Center for Best Non-fiction Book on Southwestern America from the Western History Association. Stephen Hausmann is a doctoral candidate at Temple University and Visiting Instructor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently writing his dissertation, a history of race and the environment in the Black Hills and surrounding northern plains region of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The secession of Texas from Mexico was a dry run for the slaveholder’s republic of the Confederate States of America, argues Andrew Torget in Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850(University of North Carolina Press, 2015). Torget, the University Distinguished Teaching Professor of history at the University of North Texas (and the Guinness World Record holder for longest history lesson), covers a pivotal swath of history in the American southwest. During the antebellum period, the Texas borderlands transitioned from Comanche, to Mexican, to Texan, to American territory. Slavery, Torget argues, was a crucial political and social institution each step of the way, and acted as a wedge which drove the United States apart and into Civil War. The region’s unique climate made plantation cotton cultivation profitable, and in turn shaped the history of an entire continent. Seeds of Empire won several awards in 2016, including the David J. Weber – Clements Center for Best Non-fiction Book on Southwestern America from the Western History Association. Stephen Hausmann is a doctoral candidate at Temple University and Visiting Instructor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently writing his dissertation, a history of race and the environment in the Black Hills and surrounding northern plains region of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The secession of Texas from Mexico was a dry run for the slaveholder’s republic of the Confederate States of America, argues Andrew Torget in Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850(University of North Carolina Press, 2015). Torget, the University Distinguished Teaching Professor of history at the University of North Texas (and the Guinness World Record holder for longest history lesson), covers a pivotal swath of history in the American southwest. During the antebellum period, the Texas borderlands transitioned from Comanche, to Mexican, to Texan, to American territory. Slavery, Torget argues, was a crucial political and social institution each step of the way, and acted as a wedge which drove the United States apart and into Civil War. The region’s unique climate made plantation cotton cultivation profitable, and in turn shaped the history of an entire continent. Seeds of Empire won several awards in 2016, including the David J. Weber – Clements Center for Best Non-fiction Book on Southwestern America from the Western History Association. Stephen Hausmann is a doctoral candidate at Temple University and Visiting Instructor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently writing his dissertation, a history of race and the environment in the Black Hills and surrounding northern plains region of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The secession of Texas from Mexico was a dry run for the slaveholder's republic of the Confederate States of America, argues Andrew Torget in Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850(University of North Carolina Press, 2015). Torget, the University Distinguished Teaching Professor of history at the University of North Texas (and the Guinness World Record holder for longest history lesson), covers a pivotal swath of history in the American southwest. During the antebellum period, the Texas borderlands transitioned from Comanche, to Mexican, to Texan, to American territory. Slavery, Torget argues, was a crucial political and social institution each step of the way, and acted as a wedge which drove the United States apart and into Civil War. The region's unique climate made plantation cotton cultivation profitable, and in turn shaped the history of an entire continent. Seeds of Empire won several awards in 2016, including the David J. Weber – Clements Center for Best Non-fiction Book on Southwestern America from the Western History Association. Stephen Hausmann is a doctoral candidate at Temple University and Visiting Instructor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently writing his dissertation, a history of race and the environment in the Black Hills and surrounding northern plains region of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies
The Mexican-American War was one of the pivotal moments in 19th-century American history. It bridged the Jacksonian period and the Civil War era and was a highly controversial and politically partisan conflict, the first American war to result in significant land acquisition for the young nation. In The Dead March: A History of the Mexican-American War(Harvard University Press, 2017), Indiana University Professor of history Peter Guardino argues that in order to understand the war's beginnings, its course, and its legacy, both Mexico and the United States need to be considered as equal halves in the conflict's history. Guardino uses comparative social history to examine the lived experiences of soldiers and civilians, men and women, who lived and died in the deserts of northern and central Mexico in the late 1840s. Guardino offers a cautionary tale about what happens when nationalism drives international relations and the unforeseen consequences that arise from wars of conquest. The Dead March came out with Harvard University Press in 2017 and last year won book prizes from the Society for Military History, the Conference on Latin American History, and the Western History Association. Stephen Hausmann is a doctoral candidate at Temple University and Visiting Instructor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently writing his dissertation, a history of race and the environment in the Black Hills and surrounding northern plains region of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Mexican-American War was one of the pivotal moments in 19th-century American history. It bridged the Jacksonian period and the Civil War era and was a highly controversial and politically partisan conflict, the first American war to result in significant land acquisition for the young nation. In The Dead March: A History of the Mexican-American War(Harvard University Press, 2017), Indiana University Professor of history Peter Guardino argues that in order to understand the war’s beginnings, its course, and its legacy, both Mexico and the United States need to be considered as equal halves in the conflict’s history. Guardino uses comparative social history to examine the lived experiences of soldiers and civilians, men and women, who lived and died in the deserts of northern and central Mexico in the late 1840s. Guardino offers a cautionary tale about what happens when nationalism drives international relations and the unforeseen consequences that arise from wars of conquest. The Dead March came out with Harvard University Press in 2017 and last year won book prizes from the Society for Military History, the Conference on Latin American History, and the Western History Association. Stephen Hausmann is a doctoral candidate at Temple University and Visiting Instructor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently writing his dissertation, a history of race and the environment in the Black Hills and surrounding northern plains region of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Mexican-American War was one of the pivotal moments in 19th-century American history. It bridged the Jacksonian period and the Civil War era and was a highly controversial and politically partisan conflict, the first American war to result in significant land acquisition for the young nation. In The Dead March: A History of the Mexican-American War(Harvard University Press, 2017), Indiana University Professor of history Peter Guardino argues that in order to understand the war’s beginnings, its course, and its legacy, both Mexico and the United States need to be considered as equal halves in the conflict’s history. Guardino uses comparative social history to examine the lived experiences of soldiers and civilians, men and women, who lived and died in the deserts of northern and central Mexico in the late 1840s. Guardino offers a cautionary tale about what happens when nationalism drives international relations and the unforeseen consequences that arise from wars of conquest. The Dead March came out with Harvard University Press in 2017 and last year won book prizes from the Society for Military History, the Conference on Latin American History, and the Western History Association. Stephen Hausmann is a doctoral candidate at Temple University and Visiting Instructor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently writing his dissertation, a history of race and the environment in the Black Hills and surrounding northern plains region of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Mexican-American War was one of the pivotal moments in 19th-century American history. It bridged the Jacksonian period and the Civil War era and was a highly controversial and politically partisan conflict, the first American war to result in significant land acquisition for the young nation. In The Dead March: A History of the Mexican-American War(Harvard University Press, 2017), Indiana University Professor of history Peter Guardino argues that in order to understand the war’s beginnings, its course, and its legacy, both Mexico and the United States need to be considered as equal halves in the conflict’s history. Guardino uses comparative social history to examine the lived experiences of soldiers and civilians, men and women, who lived and died in the deserts of northern and central Mexico in the late 1840s. Guardino offers a cautionary tale about what happens when nationalism drives international relations and the unforeseen consequences that arise from wars of conquest. The Dead March came out with Harvard University Press in 2017 and last year won book prizes from the Society for Military History, the Conference on Latin American History, and the Western History Association. Stephen Hausmann is a doctoral candidate at Temple University and Visiting Instructor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently writing his dissertation, a history of race and the environment in the Black Hills and surrounding northern plains region of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Mexican-American War was one of the pivotal moments in 19th-century American history. It bridged the Jacksonian period and the Civil War era and was a highly controversial and politically partisan conflict, the first American war to result in significant land acquisition for the young nation. In The Dead March: A History of the Mexican-American War(Harvard University Press, 2017), Indiana University Professor of history Peter Guardino argues that in order to understand the war’s beginnings, its course, and its legacy, both Mexico and the United States need to be considered as equal halves in the conflict’s history. Guardino uses comparative social history to examine the lived experiences of soldiers and civilians, men and women, who lived and died in the deserts of northern and central Mexico in the late 1840s. Guardino offers a cautionary tale about what happens when nationalism drives international relations and the unforeseen consequences that arise from wars of conquest. The Dead March came out with Harvard University Press in 2017 and last year won book prizes from the Society for Military History, the Conference on Latin American History, and the Western History Association. Stephen Hausmann is a doctoral candidate at Temple University and Visiting Instructor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently writing his dissertation, a history of race and the environment in the Black Hills and surrounding northern plains region of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Mexican-American War was one of the pivotal moments in 19th-century American history. It bridged the Jacksonian period and the Civil War era and was a highly controversial and politically partisan conflict, the first American war to result in significant land acquisition for the young nation. In The Dead March: A History of the Mexican-American War(Harvard University Press, 2017), Indiana University Professor of history Peter Guardino argues that in order to understand the war’s beginnings, its course, and its legacy, both Mexico and the United States need to be considered as equal halves in the conflict’s history. Guardino uses comparative social history to examine the lived experiences of soldiers and civilians, men and women, who lived and died in the deserts of northern and central Mexico in the late 1840s. Guardino offers a cautionary tale about what happens when nationalism drives international relations and the unforeseen consequences that arise from wars of conquest. The Dead March came out with Harvard University Press in 2017 and last year won book prizes from the Society for Military History, the Conference on Latin American History, and the Western History Association. Stephen Hausmann is a doctoral candidate at Temple University and Visiting Instructor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently writing his dissertation, a history of race and the environment in the Black Hills and surrounding northern plains region of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Mexican-American War was one of the pivotal moments in 19th-century American history. It bridged the Jacksonian period and the Civil War era and was a highly controversial and politically partisan conflict, the first American war to result in significant land acquisition for the young nation. In The Dead March: A History of the Mexican-American War(Harvard University Press, 2017), Indiana University Professor of history Peter Guardino argues that in order to understand the war’s beginnings, its course, and its legacy, both Mexico and the United States need to be considered as equal halves in the conflict’s history. Guardino uses comparative social history to examine the lived experiences of soldiers and civilians, men and women, who lived and died in the deserts of northern and central Mexico in the late 1840s. Guardino offers a cautionary tale about what happens when nationalism drives international relations and the unforeseen consequences that arise from wars of conquest. The Dead March came out with Harvard University Press in 2017 and last year won book prizes from the Society for Military History, the Conference on Latin American History, and the Western History Association. Stephen Hausmann is a doctoral candidate at Temple University and Visiting Instructor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently writing his dissertation, a history of race and the environment in the Black Hills and surrounding northern plains region of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In Invisible Reality: Storytellers, Storytakers, and the Supernatural World of the Blackfeet(University of Nebraska Press, 2017), author Rosalyn LaPier, an associate professor in environmental studies at the University of Montana, complicates several narratives about Native people and the nonhuman world. Rather than “living in harmony with nature,” as stereotyped by the ecological Indian mythos, the Blackfeet people of the northern plains believed they could marshal supernatural forces to bend the nonhuman world to their will. Stories and narratives about these powerful supernatural forces from Native voices filtered through white anthropologists notes and recordings via a robust storytelling economy that existed on the Blackfeet Reservation during the early decades of the twentieth century. Rather than “exploiting Grandma,” Blackfeet storytellers used their leverage as keepers of Indigenous knowledge to extract cash payments from whites seeking Blackfeet narratives and knowledge. LaPier’s book is part personal narrative, part environmental history, and part religious studies analysis of the Blackfeet and their worldview during the tumultuous transition between independence and reservation life and emphasizes the resilience of Blackfeet religion and spiritual practices up to today. Invisible Reality won multiple prizes from the Western History Association in 2018, including the inaugural Donald L. Fixico Prize in American Indian and Canadian First Nations History. Stephen Hausmann is an Assistant Professor of US History at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. He teaches courses on modern US history, environmental history, and Indigenous history and is currently working on his book manuscript, an environmental history of the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In Invisible Reality: Storytellers, Storytakers, and the Supernatural World of the Blackfeet(University of Nebraska Press, 2017), author Rosalyn LaPier, an associate professor in environmental studies at the University of Montana, complicates several narratives about Native people and the nonhuman world. Rather than “living in harmony with nature,” as stereotyped by the ecological Indian mythos, the Blackfeet people of the northern plains believed they could marshal supernatural forces to bend the nonhuman world to their will. Stories and narratives about these powerful supernatural forces from Native voices filtered through white anthropologists notes and recordings via a robust storytelling economy that existed on the Blackfeet Reservation during the early decades of the twentieth century. Rather than “exploiting Grandma,” Blackfeet storytellers used their leverage as keepers of Indigenous knowledge to extract cash payments from whites seeking Blackfeet narratives and knowledge. LaPier’s book is part personal narrative, part environmental history, and part religious studies analysis of the Blackfeet and their worldview during the tumultuous transition between independence and reservation life and emphasizes the resilience of Blackfeet religion and spiritual practices up to today. Invisible Reality won multiple prizes from the Western History Association in 2018, including the inaugural Donald L. Fixico Prize in American Indian and Canadian First Nations History. Stephen Hausmann is an Assistant Professor of US History at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. He teaches courses on modern US history, environmental history, and Indigenous history and is currently working on his book manuscript, an environmental history of the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In Invisible Reality: Storytellers, Storytakers, and the Supernatural World of the Blackfeet(University of Nebraska Press, 2017), author Rosalyn LaPier, an associate professor in environmental studies at the University of Montana, complicates several narratives about Native people and the nonhuman world. Rather than “living in harmony with nature,” as stereotyped by the ecological Indian mythos, the Blackfeet people of the northern plains believed they could marshal supernatural forces to bend the nonhuman world to their will. Stories and narratives about these powerful supernatural forces from Native voices filtered through white anthropologists notes and recordings via a robust storytelling economy that existed on the Blackfeet Reservation during the early decades of the twentieth century. Rather than “exploiting Grandma,” Blackfeet storytellers used their leverage as keepers of Indigenous knowledge to extract cash payments from whites seeking Blackfeet narratives and knowledge. LaPier’s book is part personal narrative, part environmental history, and part religious studies analysis of the Blackfeet and their worldview during the tumultuous transition between independence and reservation life and emphasizes the resilience of Blackfeet religion and spiritual practices up to today. Invisible Reality won multiple prizes from the Western History Association in 2018, including the inaugural Donald L. Fixico Prize in American Indian and Canadian First Nations History. Stephen Hausmann is an Assistant Professor of US History at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. He teaches courses on modern US history, environmental history, and Indigenous history and is currently working on his book manuscript, an environmental history of the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In Invisible Reality: Storytellers, Storytakers, and the Supernatural World of the Blackfeet(University of Nebraska Press, 2017), author Rosalyn LaPier, an associate professor in environmental studies at the University of Montana, complicates several narratives about Native people and the nonhuman world. Rather than “living in harmony with nature,” as stereotyped by the ecological Indian mythos, the Blackfeet people of the northern plains believed they could marshal supernatural forces to bend the nonhuman world to their will. Stories and narratives about these powerful supernatural forces from Native voices filtered through white anthropologists notes and recordings via a robust storytelling economy that existed on the Blackfeet Reservation during the early decades of the twentieth century. Rather than “exploiting Grandma,” Blackfeet storytellers used their leverage as keepers of Indigenous knowledge to extract cash payments from whites seeking Blackfeet narratives and knowledge. LaPier’s book is part personal narrative, part environmental history, and part religious studies analysis of the Blackfeet and their worldview during the tumultuous transition between independence and reservation life and emphasizes the resilience of Blackfeet religion and spiritual practices up to today. Invisible Reality won multiple prizes from the Western History Association in 2018, including the inaugural Donald L. Fixico Prize in American Indian and Canadian First Nations History. Stephen Hausmann is an Assistant Professor of US History at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. He teaches courses on modern US history, environmental history, and Indigenous history and is currently working on his book manuscript, an environmental history of the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In Invisible Reality: Storytellers, Storytakers, and the Supernatural World of the Blackfeet(University of Nebraska Press, 2017), author Rosalyn LaPier, an associate professor in environmental studies at the University of Montana, complicates several narratives about Native people and the nonhuman world. Rather than “living in harmony with nature,” as stereotyped by the ecological Indian mythos, the Blackfeet people of the northern plains believed they could marshal supernatural forces to bend the nonhuman world to their will. Stories and narratives about these powerful supernatural forces from Native voices filtered through white anthropologists notes and recordings via a robust storytelling economy that existed on the Blackfeet Reservation during the early decades of the twentieth century. Rather than “exploiting Grandma,” Blackfeet storytellers used their leverage as keepers of Indigenous knowledge to extract cash payments from whites seeking Blackfeet narratives and knowledge. LaPier’s book is part personal narrative, part environmental history, and part religious studies analysis of the Blackfeet and their worldview during the tumultuous transition between independence and reservation life and emphasizes the resilience of Blackfeet religion and spiritual practices up to today. Invisible Reality won multiple prizes from the Western History Association in 2018, including the inaugural Donald L. Fixico Prize in American Indian and Canadian First Nations History. Stephen Hausmann is an Assistant Professor of US History at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. He teaches courses on modern US history, environmental history, and Indigenous history and is currently working on his book manuscript, an environmental history of the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In Invisible Reality: Storytellers, Storytakers, and the Supernatural World of the Blackfeet(University of Nebraska Press, 2017), author Rosalyn LaPier, an associate professor in environmental studies at the University of Montana, complicates several narratives about Native people and the nonhuman world. Rather than “living in harmony with nature,” as stereotyped by the ecological Indian mythos, the Blackfeet people of the northern plains believed they could marshal supernatural forces to bend the nonhuman world to their will. Stories and narratives about these powerful supernatural forces from Native voices filtered through white anthropologists notes and recordings via a robust storytelling economy that existed on the Blackfeet Reservation during the early decades of the twentieth century. Rather than “exploiting Grandma,” Blackfeet storytellers used their leverage as keepers of Indigenous knowledge to extract cash payments from whites seeking Blackfeet narratives and knowledge. LaPier’s book is part personal narrative, part environmental history, and part religious studies analysis of the Blackfeet and their worldview during the tumultuous transition between independence and reservation life and emphasizes the resilience of Blackfeet religion and spiritual practices up to today. Invisible Reality won multiple prizes from the Western History Association in 2018, including the inaugural Donald L. Fixico Prize in American Indian and Canadian First Nations History. Stephen Hausmann is an Assistant Professor of US History at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. He teaches courses on modern US history, environmental history, and Indigenous history and is currently working on his book manuscript, an environmental history of the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In Invisible Reality: Storytellers, Storytakers, and the Supernatural World of the Blackfeet(University of Nebraska Press, 2017), author Rosalyn LaPier, an associate professor in environmental studies at the University of Montana, complicates several narratives about Native people and the nonhuman world. Rather than “living in harmony with nature,” as stereotyped by the ecological Indian mythos, the Blackfeet people of the northern plains believed they could marshal supernatural forces to bend the nonhuman world to their will. Stories and narratives about these powerful supernatural forces from Native voices filtered through white anthropologists notes and recordings via a robust storytelling economy that existed on the Blackfeet Reservation during the early decades of the twentieth century. Rather than “exploiting Grandma,” Blackfeet storytellers used their leverage as keepers of Indigenous knowledge to extract cash payments from whites seeking Blackfeet narratives and knowledge. LaPier’s book is part personal narrative, part environmental history, and part religious studies analysis of the Blackfeet and their worldview during the tumultuous transition between independence and reservation life and emphasizes the resilience of Blackfeet religion and spiritual practices up to today. Invisible Reality won multiple prizes from the Western History Association in 2018, including the inaugural Donald L. Fixico Prize in American Indian and Canadian First Nations History. Stephen Hausmann is an Assistant Professor of US History at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. He teaches courses on modern US history, environmental history, and Indigenous history and is currently working on his book manuscript, an environmental history of the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In 1999, the Makahs went out on the Pacific for their first whale hunt in over seventy years. The event drew protests from animal rights activists and local (mostly white) Washingtonians. But to the Makahs, the event was a cause for celebration. Why did the whale hunt hold such divergent meanings for different people along the Northwest Pacific Coast? Joshua Reid, Associate Professor of History at the University of Washington, attempts to answer that question in The Sea is My Country: The Maritime World of the Makahs (Yale University Press, 2015), which won the Caughey Prize from the Western History Association in 2016, along with several other awards. For centuries, the Makahs valued maritime space as a central part of their homeland. Europeans empires, and later Americans and international institutions, tried to impose their own notions of spatial control and hard borders onto the Pacific Northwest borderland, but often ran up against Native power. The Makahs have repeatedly adapted to changing political and economic circumstances, adopting what Reid calls a “moditional economy” as a means of handling newcomers who tried to commandeer their homeland and its rich seas. The Sea is My Country is a book about Indigenous adaptability and dynamism as well as changing human relationships to maritime ecologies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In 1999, the Makahs went out on the Pacific for their first whale hunt in over seventy years. The event drew protests from animal rights activists and local (mostly white) Washingtonians. But to the Makahs, the event was a cause for celebration. Why did the whale hunt hold such divergent meanings for different people along the Northwest Pacific Coast? Joshua Reid, Associate Professor of History at the University of Washington, attempts to answer that question in The Sea is My Country: The Maritime World of the Makahs (Yale University Press, 2015), which won the Caughey Prize from the Western History Association in 2016, along with several other awards. For centuries, the Makahs valued maritime space as a central part of their homeland. Europeans empires, and later Americans and international institutions, tried to impose their own notions of spatial control and hard borders onto the Pacific Northwest borderland, but often ran up against Native power. The Makahs have repeatedly adapted to changing political and economic circumstances, adopting what Reid calls a “moditional economy” as a means of handling newcomers who tried to commandeer their homeland and its rich seas. The Sea is My Country is a book about Indigenous adaptability and dynamism as well as changing human relationships to maritime ecologies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In 1999, the Makahs went out on the Pacific for their first whale hunt in over seventy years. The event drew protests from animal rights activists and local (mostly white) Washingtonians. But to the Makahs, the event was a cause for celebration. Why did the whale hunt hold such divergent meanings for different people along the Northwest Pacific Coast? Joshua Reid, Associate Professor of History at the University of Washington, attempts to answer that question in The Sea is My Country: The Maritime World of the Makahs (Yale University Press, 2015), which won the Caughey Prize from the Western History Association in 2016, along with several other awards. For centuries, the Makahs valued maritime space as a central part of their homeland. Europeans empires, and later Americans and international institutions, tried to impose their own notions of spatial control and hard borders onto the Pacific Northwest borderland, but often ran up against Native power. The Makahs have repeatedly adapted to changing political and economic circumstances, adopting what Reid calls a “moditional economy” as a means of handling newcomers who tried to commandeer their homeland and its rich seas. The Sea is My Country is a book about Indigenous adaptability and dynamism as well as changing human relationships to maritime ecologies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In 1999, the Makahs went out on the Pacific for their first whale hunt in over seventy years. The event drew protests from animal rights activists and local (mostly white) Washingtonians. But to the Makahs, the event was a cause for celebration. Why did the whale hunt hold such divergent meanings for different people along the Northwest Pacific Coast? Joshua Reid, Associate Professor of History at the University of Washington, attempts to answer that question in The Sea is My Country: The Maritime World of the Makahs (Yale University Press, 2015), which won the Caughey Prize from the Western History Association in 2016, along with several other awards. For centuries, the Makahs valued maritime space as a central part of their homeland. Europeans empires, and later Americans and international institutions, tried to impose their own notions of spatial control and hard borders onto the Pacific Northwest borderland, but often ran up against Native power. The Makahs have repeatedly adapted to changing political and economic circumstances, adopting what Reid calls a “moditional economy” as a means of handling newcomers who tried to commandeer their homeland and its rich seas. The Sea is My Country is a book about Indigenous adaptability and dynamism as well as changing human relationships to maritime ecologies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In 1999, the Makahs went out on the Pacific for their first whale hunt in over seventy years. The event drew protests from animal rights activists and local (mostly white) Washingtonians. But to the Makahs, the event was a cause for celebration. Why did the whale hunt hold such divergent meanings for different people along the Northwest Pacific Coast? Joshua Reid, Associate Professor of History at the University of Washington, attempts to answer that question in The Sea is My Country: The Maritime World of the Makahs (Yale University Press, 2015), which won the Caughey Prize from the Western History Association in 2016, along with several other awards. For centuries, the Makahs valued maritime space as a central part of their homeland. Europeans empires, and later Americans and international institutions, tried to impose their own notions of spatial control and hard borders onto the Pacific Northwest borderland, but often ran up against Native power. The Makahs have repeatedly adapted to changing political and economic circumstances, adopting what Reid calls a “moditional economy” as a means of handling newcomers who tried to commandeer their homeland and its rich seas. The Sea is My Country is a book about Indigenous adaptability and dynamism as well as changing human relationships to maritime ecologies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In "Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson," prize-winning historian Christina Snyder reinterprets the history of Jacksonian America. Most often, this drama focuses on whites who turned west to conquer a continent, extending "liberty" as they went. Great Crossings also includes Native Americans from across the continent seeking new ways to assert anciently-held rights and people of African descent who challenged the United States to live up to its ideals. These diverse groups met in an experimental community in central Kentucky called Great Crossings, home to the first federal Indian school and a famous interracial family.Great Crossings embodied monumental changes then transforming North America. The United States, within the span of a few decades, grew from an East Coast nation to a continental empire. The territorial growth of the United States forged a multicultural, multiracial society, but that diversity also sparked fierce debates over race, citizenship, and America's destiny. Great Crossings, a place of race-mixing and cultural exchange, emerged as a battleground. Its history provides an intimate view of the ambitions and struggles of Indians, settlers, and slaves who were trying to secure their place in a changing world. Through deep research and compelling prose, Snyder introduces us to a diverse range of historical actors: Richard Mentor Johnson, the politician who reportedly killed Tecumseh and then became schoolmaster to the sons of his former foes; Julia Chinn, Johnson's enslaved concubine, who fought for her children's freedom; and Peter Pitchlynn, a Choctaw intellectual who, even in the darkest days of Indian removal, argued for the future of Indian nations. Together, their stories demonstrate how this era transformed colonizers and the colonized alike, sowing the seeds of modern America.Christina Snyder is the McCabe Greer Professor of History at Pennsylvania State University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2007. Her first book, Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America, earned a wide range of accolades, including the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Book Prize, the James H. Broussard Prize from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, and the John C. Ewers Prize from the Western History Association. Her latest work is Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson.Song Credit: Tommy Case's The Great Crossing Waltz.
LDS Perspectives is pleased to announce a new podcast interview with David W. Grua, a historian and documentary editor with the Joseph Smith Papers. David holds a Ph.D. in American History from Texas Christian University and an M.A. and B.A. from Brigham Young University. He is the author of Surviving Wounded Knee: The Lakotas and the Politics of Memory (Oxford, 2016), which was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title and was awarded the Robert M. Utley Prize from the Western History Association. David worked five years as a research assistant for the Joseph Smith Papers while a student at BYU and has spent the last four and a half years as a volume editor. In David’s work for the project, he specializes in the Mormon experience in Missouri, Mormon-Indian relations, and Joseph Smith’s legal papers. In this episode, LDS Perspectives podcaster Taunalyn Rutherford interviews David about the latest volume in the Joseph Smith Papers—Documents, Volume 6—which covers February 1838–August 1839. This was a tumultuous period in the life of Joseph Smith and the history of the church, marked by internal dissent, the abandonment of Kirtland, Ohio, as church headquarters, the outbreak of violence with anti-Mormons in Missouri, the emergence of the Danite Society, the Missouri-Mormon War, Governor Lilburn W. Boggs’s infamous “extermination order,” Joseph Smith’s imprisonment in Liberty, Missouri, and the exodus and relocation of the Saints to Illinois. This was also a time characterized by spiritual outpourings and revelation, with the Prophet dictating D&C 115–120, writing the letters that included D&C 121–123, and delivering several doctrinally-rich discourses to the Twelve Apostles as they prepared for their mission to England. Taunalyn and David review this history in detail and the documents published in the volume. David also discusses his “Joseph Smith’s Missouri Prison Letters and the Mormon Textual Community,” an essay that will be published in Foundational Texts of Mormonism: Examining Major Early Sources in February 2018 from Oxford University Press. The book is edited by Joseph Smith Papers scholars Mark Ashurst-McGee, Robin Scott Jensen, and Sharalyn D. Howcroft. David’s chapter grew out of research conducted while editing the extant letters composed by Joseph Smith to church members while he was in Missouri state custody for Documents, Volume 6. The essay provides a fine-grained analysis of the prophet’s approach to writing the letters. While in state custody, Joseph wrote five handwritten missives for his wife, Emma Smith. Relying on scribes, Joseph also composed three general epistles addressed to the church as a whole. David places Joseph’s letters in conversation with other famous “prison letters” written by the Apostle Paul, Protestant and Catholic prisoners during the Reformation, and Martin Luther King during the Civil Rights Movement. David concludes that while Joseph Smith’s focus on the meaning of suffering was similar to the other letter writers, the prophet differed from the others by connecting suffering with divine revelation. Join us for this fascinating podcast.
LDS Perspectives is pleased to announce a new podcast interview with David W. Grua, a historian and documentary editor with the Joseph Smith Papers. David holds a Ph.D. in American History from Texas Christian University and an M.A. and B.A. from Brigham Young University. He is the author of Surviving Wounded Knee: The Lakotas and the Politics of Memory (Oxford, 2016), which was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title and was awarded the Robert M. Utley Prize from the Western History Association. David worked five years as a research assistant for the Joseph Smith Papers while a student at BYU and has spent the last four and a half years as a volume editor. In David’s work for the project, he specializes in the Mormon experience in Missouri, Mormon-Indian relations, and Joseph Smith’s legal papers. In this episode, LDS Perspectives podcaster Taunalyn Rutherford interviews David about the latest volume in the Joseph Smith Papers—Documents, Volume 6—which covers February 1838–August 1839. This was a tumultuous period in the life of Joseph Smith and the history of the church, marked by internal dissent, the abandonment of Kirtland, Ohio, as church headquarters, the outbreak of violence with anti-Mormons in Missouri, the emergence of the Danite Society, the Missouri-Mormon War, Governor Lilburn W. Boggs’s infamous “extermination order,” Joseph Smith’s imprisonment in Liberty, Missouri, and the exodus and relocation of the Saints to Illinois. This was also a time characterized by spiritual outpourings and revelation, with the Prophet dictating D&C 115–120, writing the letters that included D&C 121–123, and delivering several doctrinally-rich discourses to the Twelve Apostles as they prepared for their mission to England. Taunalyn and David review this history in detail and the documents published in the volume. David also discusses his “Joseph Smith’s Missouri Prison Letters and the Mormon Textual Community,” an essay that will be published in Foundational Texts of Mormonism: Examining Major Early Sources in February 2018 from Oxford University Press. The book is edited by Joseph Smith Papers scholars Mark Ashurst-McGee, Robin Scott Jensen, and Sharalyn D. Howcroft. David’s chapter grew out of research conducted while editing the extant letters composed by Joseph Smith to church members while he was in Missouri state custody for Documents, Volume 6. The essay provides a fine-grained analysis of the prophet’s approach to writing the letters. While in state custody, Joseph wrote five handwritten missives for his wife, Emma Smith. Relying on scribes, Joseph also composed three general epistles addressed to the church as a whole. David places Joseph’s letters in conversation with other famous “prison letters” written by the Apostle Paul, Protestant and Catholic prisoners during the Reformation, and Martin Luther King during the Civil Rights Movement. David concludes that while Joseph Smith’s focus on the meaning of suffering was similar to the other letter writers, the prophet differed from the others by connecting suffering with divine revelation. Join us for this fascinating podcast. Extra Resources: Joseph Smith Papers: the Website Joseph Smith Papers: Documents, Volume 6
Jere Krakow recently completed a public service career with the National Park Service and previously was a college professor in American history. Krakow served as superintendent of nine National Historic Trails, including the Oregon, Santa Fe, Pony Express, and Trail of Tears National Historic Trails. He has a long-standing goal of connecting the historic sites of the nation with students and citizens alike. Krakow is a fellowship recipient from the National Endowment for the Humanities and holder of awards from several historic trail friend groups. He is a member of the Western History Association and a consultant on the administration of historic trails, commemorative events, and the activities associated with them. Currently serving as a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow, Krakow's presentation will help us celebrate the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service.
The Center of the American West is proud to announce the 2013 Wallace Stegner Award Winner: Western American Historian and Author, Elliott West. “Elliott West is the best historian of the American West writing today.” – Richard White Each year, the Center of the American West presents the Wallace Stegner Award to an individual who has have faithfully and evocatively depicted the spirit of the American West. Elliott West, who received his doctorate from the University of Colorado, is author of six books, most recently The Essential West: Collected Essays (2012). His book, The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story (2009) is one of three of his books to receive the Western Heritage Award and two to win the Western History Association’s Caughey Prize. His book, The Contested Plains (1998), received six national awards, including the PEN-West Award as the year’s best non-fiction book, and the Francis Parkman Prize as the outstanding book in American history. It is considered a classic in the field. This event is made possible by the generosity of Al and Carol Ann Olson.