If You Go
Date: November 9, 2022
Time: 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM MT
Where: Norlin Library, CBIS 5th Floor, Room M549

Race & the Railroad: A Conversation with Julia Lee and Paisley Rekdal. This event will be held in the CBIS Room, 5^th floor Norlin Library, between former Utah Poet Laureate, Paisley Rekdal, who will talk about her digital humanities project  alongside Dr. Julia Lee, Professor of Asian American Studies at UC Irvine who has just published her book . West: A Translation is a collection of poems and essays that draws a powerful connection between the transcontinental railroad completion and the Chinese Exclusion Act.The Racial Railroad highlights the central role that the railroad played in the formation and perception of racial identity and difference in the US. Join the conversation about the impact of the railroad and it's role in racial identity in the United States.

About the Speakers:

Julia Lee, Associate Professor, Author of "The Racial Railroad"

Julia H. Lee, PhD is Associate Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California at Irvine and author of Interracial Encounters: Reciprocal Representations in African and Asian American Literatures, 1896–1937 and Understanding Maxine Hong Kingston. She also recently published her book, , which reveals the legacy of the train as a critical site of race in the United States

The Racial Railroad highlights the surprisingly central role that the railroad has played—and continues to play—in the formation and perception of racial identity and difference in the United States. Lee demonstrates how, through legacies of racialized labor and disenfranchisement—from the Chinese American construction of the Transcontinental Railroad and the depictions of Native Americans in landscape and advertising, to the underground railroad and Jim Crow segregation—the train becomes one of the exemplary spaces through which American cultural works explore questions of racial subjectivity, community, and conflict. 

By considering the train through various lenses, The Racial Railroad tracks how racial formations and conflicts are constituted in significant and contradictory ways by the spaces in which they occur.

Paisley Rekdal, Award Winning Poet, Author, Professor, and Creator of "West: A Translation"

In 2018,  was commissioned by the Spike 150 Foundation to write a poem commemorating the 150^th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad’s completion. The result is : a linked collection of poems that respond to a Chinese elegy carved into the walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station where Chinese migrants to the United States were detained. “West” translates this elegy character by character through the lens of Chinese and other transcontinental railroad workers’ histories, and through the railroad’s cultural impact on America.

Paisley Rekdal has received countless fellowships, prizes, and awards for her poems and essays. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Poetry, The New Republic, Tin House, the Best American Poetry series, on National Public Radio, among others. 

Between 2017-2022, she served as Utah's Poet Laureate, receiving a 2019 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship. She is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Utah and currently serves a a poetry editor for High Country News.

Event Hosts:

This free event is hosted by 91��ý's Center for Humanities & the Arts (CHA), Center for American West (CAW), and 91��ý's English Department.

Directions:

The Race and the Railroad event will take place on the 5th floor of Norlin Library, room M549, in the Center for British and Irish Studies (CBIS) room M549. To access the CBIS Room M549, use the West entrance of Norlin Library and take the elevator to the 5th floor. You may also use either the north or south stairwell to the 5th floor. 

Address:
184 UCB
1720 Pleasant Street
Boulder, CO 80309

Off

  If You Go
Date: April 1, 2022
Time: 11:00AM
Where: Macky Gallery

The Surprising Force of Unconventional Communication in Reckoning with Climate Change

Right before your eyes, four women “pushed the envelope” of the assumptions that have constrained efforts to persuade the public to pay attention to climate change and closely related environmental issues. By 12:30 p.m. on April Fools’ Day, the “envelope” of conventional thinking was “pushed” with such grace, humor, and good nature (pun totally intended)—that attendees and participants was positioned to head back into the world with a dramatically (here, too, pun fully intended) expanded sense of possibility, liberated—if they so choose—to join the cause of Hopeless Optimism.

Off

  If You Go
Date: April 26, 2022
Time: 6:00PM
Where: Humanities 250

How Spending Time with Thompson Prize Winner Jenny Shank and Getting Acquainted with Her New Book Could Offer a Remedy for Our Nation's Current Calamities in Communication

Joined by Patty Limerick, Faculty Director and Chair of the Board for the Center of the American West, she reunited with past Thompson Prize winner and local, Boulder author of Mixed Company, Jenny Shank, for a lively discussion about how Shank’s writing career harmonizes with the mission of the Center of the American West. Mixed Company has been named a finalist for the Colorado Book Awards in the General Fiction category. The winners will be announced in June. Stay tuned for special guests who joined the conversation!

The Center of the American West takes as its mission the creation of forums for the respectful exchange of ideas and perspectives in the pursuit of solutions to the region's difficulties. We at the Center believe that an understanding of the historical origins of the West's problems, an emphasis on the common interests of all parties, and a dose of good humor are essential to constructive public discussion.

Off

  If You Go
Date: June 9, 2021
Time: 12:00PM
Where: Virtual

Natalia Molina is a historian who examines the interconnectedness of racial and ethnic communities through her concept of “racial scripts.” Author of How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts and Fit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1940.

Historians Imagine is a monthly webinar devoted to this dimension of the craft. Patty Limerick and Matthew Jacobson talk with path-breaking historians about the inventiveness and vision of their work, and about the more mysterious aspects of their practices—their imaginative spark and the virtues that lie beyond rigor and out of reach of your typical “how to” manual. These conversations will appeal to professional historians, to be sure, and might offer liberation from the academy’s constraints and the disciplining demands of convention. But they will equally engage anyone who is interested in how new stories are made from old materials, and how great storytellers and historical sleuths think to do what they do.

Patty Limerick is the Faculty Director and Chair of the Board at 91��ý’s Center of the American West. Matthew Frye Jacobson is William Robertson Coe Professor of American Studies and History at Yale. He is the author of seven books on race, politics, and culture in the United States.

I don’t find anything particularly magical about my creation process. I think, share, write, share, re-write, share, re-write, share and eventually it feels done. What some people see as magic and creativity I see as writing before I’m ready, getting feedback and rewriting

We will work with ADA Compliance to attempt to fulfill any disability requests for ASL interpreting and/or real-time captioning for these events. Such requests should be made at least seven days in advance of the event. Requests received less than 48 hours prior to the event cannot be guaranteed.

To make a request, please email admin@centerwest.org or adacoordinator@colorado.edu.

Off

  If You Go
Date: September 1, 2005
Time: 7:00 PM
Where: Tattered Cover Bookstore, Denver, CO

Denver Scholars and Civil Servants

The program “Words to Stir the Soul” is our fall “kick-off” event, spotlighting some of the region’s best writing and providing a unique opportunity for both readers and attendees to deepen their appreciation of the region in which we live.

Of all the people who feel connected to and committed to Western places, individuals who are willing to run for and hold public office are surely leaders in that terrain. So this year’s event will have a special theme – “Scholars and Civil Servants.” We are inviting current, former, and hopeful public officials to share their love for the West through literature, as well as scholars whose love for the west is shown through their teachings.

The program generally runs about an hour and a half and offers an eclectic, interesting, lively, and often enchanting listening experience. Being “read aloud to” is as wonderful, comforting, and treasured an experience for adults as it is for children.

Off

  If You Go
Date: September 6, 2005

12 Books - 1 Boulder

Susan Deans, Vice President and Editor of the Daily Camera
Reading from Robert L. Perkin, The First 100 Years: An Informal History of Denver and the Rocky Mountain News (Doubleday, 1959). ASIN: B00007E6NGO

Justin Dombrowski, Boulder Wildland Fire Management Coordinator
Reading from Gary Snyder, “Axe Handles” from Axe Handles: Poems (Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005). ISBN: 1593760574

Clay Evans, Daily Camera Columnist
Reading from Robinson Jeffers, “The Deer Lay Down Their Bones” from Selected Poems (Vintage, 1965). ISBN: 0394702956; and Edward Winslow Bryant, Jr., “Strata” from Wyoming Sun (Jelm Mountain, 1980). ISBN: 093620415X

Jerrie Hurd, Author of The Lady Pinkerton Gets Her Man and the forthcoming Just Above Bone
Reading from Isabel Allende, Zorro (HarperCollins, 2005). ISBN: 0060778970

Eric Love, Associate Professor of History, CU-Boulder
Reading from Randall Kenan, Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century (Vintage, 2000). ISBN: 067973788X

Cora Evelyn Prude, Undergraduate History Major and Candidate for Western American Studies Certificate

George Russell, M.D., Cowboy Poet
Reading from Hugh Antoine D’Arcy, “The Face on the Barroom Floor” from The Best Loved Poems of the American People, (Doubleday; Reissue 1936). ISBN: 0385000197.

Reg Saner, Retired Professor of English, CU-Boulder; Author of The Dawn Collector: On My Way to the Natural World and The Four-Cornered Falcon: Essays on the Interior West and the Natural Scene
Reading from Reg Saner, Desert Savvy (forthcoming).

Charles Scoggin, M.D., CEO and Co-founder of Sage Medical Institute; Board Member, Center of the American West
Reading from Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire (University of Chicago Press, 1992). ISBN: 0226500616

Frank Shorter, Olympic Gold Medalist Marathon Runner
Reading from Frank Waters, The Man Who Killed the Deer (Swallow Press, 1942). ISBN: 0804001944

Lorenzo Trujillo, Assistant Dean, School of Law; Board Member, Center of the American West
Reading from Marie Oralia Durán Trujillo, Autumn Memories: My New Mexican Roots and Traditions (El Escritorio, 1999). ASIN: 0962897477

Charles Wilkinson, Moses Lasky Professor of Law, CU-Boulder
Reading from Wallace Stegner, The Sound of Mountain Water (Penguin, 1997). ISBN: 0140266747

James Williams, Dean of Libraries, CU-Boulder
Reading from David Lavender, The Way to the Western Sea: Lewis and Clark Across the Continent (Doubleday, 1988). ISBN: 0803280033

Off

  If You Go
Date: September 23, 2005

Secretaries of the Interior Series

Former U.S. Secretary of the Interior and Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt will visit the University of Colorado at Boulder Sept. 23 to speak about his new book, Cities in the Wilderness: A New Vision of Land Use in America.

Babbitt’s appearance was sponsored by CU-Boulder’s Center of the American West, Natural 91��ý Law Center, and Center for Environmental Journalism.

The “Cities in the Wilderness” title refers to how the boundaries that once separated cities from surrounding forests, farmlands, and natural landscapes are beginning to blur and disappear, Babbitt said. “Sprawl is erasing the distinction between the built environment and the natural environment,” he said. “And both the quality of urban life and the integrity of our natural ecosystems are declining. Cities and natural landscapes, or wilderness, function best with a fair degree of separation, which is made possible by good land-use planning.”

Babbitt currently practices law in Washington, D.C. He served as Secretary of the Interior from 1993 to 2001, as Governor of Arizona from 1978 to 1987, and as Attorney General of Arizona from 1975 to 1978.

The son of a northern Arizona ranching family, Babbitt came to appreciate and treasure the West’s cultural and natural heritage at an early age. His father helped found the Arizona Wildlife Federation and the Arizona Game Protective Association.

With degrees in geology, geophysics, and law, Babbitt was first elected to statewide office in Arizona at age 36. In 1978 he became Governor, won reelection twice to that office, and served nine years in all. In 1988, Babbitt was a candidate for President of the United States. From 1988 to 1993 he practiced law and served as head of the League of Conservation Voters.

As Secretary of the Interior from 1993 to 2001, Babbitt tackled some of the most complex and controversial issues in public land management, resulting in reforms to mining, grazing, and endangered species law, and the protection of millions of acres of federal land through the designation and creation of several national monuments.

Highlights of his tenure at the Department of the Interior include shaping the old-growth forest plan in the Pacific Northwest; drafting interagency plans to restore the ecosystem of south Florida, the Everglades and Florida Bay; helping to enact the massive California Desert Protection Act, the largest land-protection bill ever enacted in the lower 48 states; forging new legislation for protection of the national wildlife refuges; and negotiating the largest state-federal land swap in the history of the lower 48 states to create the 2-million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and other parks in Utah.

Babbitt became the first Interior Secretary to restore fire to its natural role in the wild, and the first to train and serve as an actual firefighter. He also became the first Interior Secretary to tear down dams and restore the flow of rivers into the Atlantic and the Pacific. He was personally involved in demonstrating catch-and-release programs for endangered trout and salmon to highlight how restoring native fish habitat can help restore economies.

Off

  If You Go
Date: September 27, 2005

A Talk with Manager Dave Hunsaker, Charles Wilkinson, and Patricia Limerick

The first nine years of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah was discussed with monument manager Dave Hunsaker in a public event at the University of Colorado at Boulder on Sept. 28. Hunsaker’s talk was followed by a conversation with CU-Boulder history and environmental studies Professor Patricia Nelson Limerick and Distinguished Professor Charles Wilkinson of the Law School.

Hunsaker was named Public Lands Manager of the Year in 2004 by the Public Lands Foundation. He will talk about the Bureau of Land Management’s efforts to protect the land while also collaborating with community members with sometimes hostile attitudes toward the new monument.

President Bill Clinton and Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt used the President’s Antiquities Act authority to establish the 1.7-million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in south-central Utah in a controversial 1996 decision.

“The new national monuments of the Clinton era have been illuminating and consequential experiments in the practice of conservation,” Limerick said. “David Hunsaker’s experiences and observations are rich resources for everyone interested in the well-being of the West’s public lands.”

Hunsaker has participated in the early stages of several major public land programs, including the monument. He also has worked on important projects and initiatives such as the National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, the Friends of Red Rock Canyon, and other partnerships.

Off

  If You Go
Date: October 25, 2005

Louis Warren explores the life of William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, the most famous American in the world in the late nineteenth century. Along the way, we learn the sources of his legend, and how his purposeful (and fantastically popular) entangling of history and myth illuminate for us the politics and culture of the United States after the Civil War.

Warren’s book is a biography and social history that examines Cody’s genuine achievements, his many self-inventions, and the manner in which he successfully combined the two. Although Cody exaggerated his accomplishments, he was a genuine hunter and fighter as well as an intuitive performance genius, according to Warren.

Warren is a Professor of History at the University of California at Davis. He is also the author of The Hunter’s Game: Poachers and Conservationists in Twentieth-Century America, which won the Western Heritage Award for Outstanding Nonfiction Book in 1998, given by the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Museum.

Off

  If You Go
Date: November 2, 2005
Time: 7:00 PM
Where: Glenn Miller Ballroom, UMC

2005 Wallace Stegner Award Recipient

Author and naturalist Terry Tempest Williams will be honored by the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Center of the American West on Nov. 2 at 7:00 p.m.

The Center will present Williams with its highest recognition, the Wallace Stegner Award. The free public event will be in the University Memorial Center’s Glenn Miller Ballroom. Williams also will be available to sign books at a reception before the event at 5:00 p.m. Given Williams’ popularity, audience members are encouraged to arrive early for the reception and award presentation.

The Stegner Award presentation will feature an interview and discussion of Williams’ career conducted by Patty Limerick, Professor of History and Environmental Studies and Chair of the Board at the Center of the American West, and Charles Wilkinson, Distinguished Professor of Law at CU-Boulder.

A well-known writer and naturalist, Williams is perhaps most noted for her book Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place. She has long been active in environmental and conservation issues in the West. She also has testified twice before the U.S. Congress about women’s health and the environmental links to cancer.

Her work has appeared in national and international publications, including The New Yorker, The Nation, Outside, Audubon, Orion, The Iowa Review, and The New England Review. Williams is the author of ten books, including two children’s books.

“Terry Tempest Williams is one of those unusual people who is as memorable and moving as a speaker as she is as a writer,” Limerick said. “If you never quite understood what it means to say that someone has a ‘radiant and charismatic personality,’ you can find out on the evening of November 2.”

The Center presents the Wallace Stegner Award to individuals who have made a sustained contribution to the cultural identity of the West through literature, art, history, lore, or understanding of the West. John Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield War, was the most recent recipient of the award in 2003. Other recipients include N. Scott Momaday, Rudolfo Anaya, Vine Deloria, Jr., and Alvin Josephy.

The handmade certificate features a personalized inscription to reflect the recipient’s distinguished accomplishments and includes a $1,000 cash award. The Wallace Stegner Award is sponsored by the Olson Family.

The Center of the American West originated in a conversation between Limerick and Wilkinson in 1986, and focuses on identifying and addressing critical issues in the West.

Off