Matthew Ward is Senior Lecturer in American History at the University of Dundee. This interview is based on his new book, Making the Frontier Man: Violence, White Manhood, and Authority in the Early Western Backcountry (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023)....
American West
The Author’s Corner with James Jewell
James Jewell is Professor of History and Co-Chair of the Social and Behavioral Science Division at North Idaho College. This interview is based on his new book, Agents of Empire: The First Oregon Cavalry and the Opening of the Interior...
The Author’s Corner with Julie Carr
Julie Carr is Professor of English and Chair of Women and Gender Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. This interview is based on her new book, Mud, Blood, and Ghosts: Populism, Eugenics, and Spiritualism in the American West (University...
The Author’s Corner with Elliott West
Elliott West is History Consultant at the University of Arkansas. This interview is based on his new book, Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion (University of Nebraska Press, 2023). JF: What led you to write Continental...
The Author’s Corner with Amy Kohout
Amy Kohout is Associate Professor of History at Colorado College. This interview is based on her new book, Taking the Field: Soldiers, Nature, and Empire on American Frontiers (University of Nebraska Press, 2023). JF: What led you to write Taking the...
The Author’s Corner with Lloyd Barba
Lloyd Barba is Assistant Professor of Religion at Amherst College. This interview is based on his new book, Sowing the Sacred: Mexican Pentecostal Farmworkers in California (Oxford University Press, 2022). JF: What led you to write Sowing the Sacred? LB: Having...
The Author’s Corner with Amanda Hendrix-Komoto
Amanda Hendrix-Komoto is Assistant Professor of History at Montana State University. This interview is based on her new book, Imperial Zions: Religion, Race, and Family in the American West and the Pacific (University of Nebraska Press, 2022). JF: What led...
The Author’s Corner with Alan J. M. Noonan
Alan J. M. Noonan is an independent historian. This interview is based on his new book, Mining Irish-American Lives: Western Communities from 1849-1920 (University Press of Colorado, 2022). JF: What led you to write Mining Irish-American Lives? AN: I have...
Patricia Limerick is fired from the University of Colorado’s Center of the American West
Limerick, arguably the most prominent historian of the American West in the country, is the Center‘s co-founder and has run it for thirty-six years. Here is Jason Blevins at The Colorado Sun: Patty Limerick, an iconic professor, author and scholar...
The Author’s Corner with Michael Weeks
Michael Weeks is Lecturer of History at Utah Valley University. This interview is based on his new book, Cattle Beet Capital: Making Industrial Agriculture in Northern Colorado (University of Nebraska Press, 2022). JF: What led you to write Cattle Beet...
The Author’s Corner with Andrea McDowell
Andrea McDowell is Professor of Law at Seton Hall University School of Law. This interview is based on her new book, We the Miners: Self-Government in the California Gold Rush (Harvard University Press, 2022). JF: What led you to write...
The Author’s Corner with Peter Boag
Peter Boag is Professor and Columbia Chair in the History of the American West at Washington State University. This interview is based on his new book, Pioneering Death: The Violence of Boyhood in Turn-of-the-Century Oregon (University of Washington Press, 2022)....
The Author’s Corner with Anne F. Hyde
Anne F. Hyde is Professor of History and Editor of the Western Historical Quarterly at the University of Oklahoma. This interview is based on her new book, Born of Lakes and Plains: Mixed-Descent Peoples and the Making of the American...
The Western Klan
When we think of the Ku Klux Klan we think about the American South during Reconstruction and the 1920s. But as Kevin Waite informs us in his recent piece at The Atlantic, the Klan also targeted Chinese immigrants in California....
How the Hudson Bay Company Tried to Prevent the Spread of Small Pox
In 1780, a smallpox outbreak that ravaged much of the Western North America arrived on the Northern Great Plains. According to historian Scott Berthelette, the disease spread from Mexico through “Indegenous horse-borne trading and warfare” and claimed tens of thousand...
The Author’s Corner with Cameron Strang
Cameron B. Strang is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Nevada-Reno. This interview is based on his recently released book Frontiers of Science: Imperialism and Natural Knowledge in the Gulf South Borderlands, 1500-1850 (Omohundro Institute/University of North Carolina Press,...
The National Endowment for the Humanities Funded a Summer Seminar for Teachers on the History of the Hoover Dam
Donald Trump’s current budget proposal will eliminate government funding for the humanities. This means that local communities and American citizens will need to come up with other ways to fund programs like this: Last summer 6-12 grade teachers gathered in...
The Author’s Corner with Thomas Carter
Tom Carter is Professor of Architectural History at the University of Utah. This interview is based on his new book, Building Zion: The Material World of Mormon Settlement (University of Minnesota Press, March 2015). JF: What led you to write Building Zion: The...
The Author’s Corner with Virginia Scharff
Virginia Scharff is Distinguished Professor of History at The University of New Mexico. This interview is based on her new book, Empire and Liberty: The Civil War and the West (University of California Press, April 2015). JF: What led you to...
The Author’s Corner with Todd M. Kerstetter
Todd M. Kerstetter is Associate Professor of History and Director of Graduate Studies at Texas Christian University. This interview is based on his new book Inspiration and Innovation: Religion in the American West (Wiley-Blackwell, January 2015). JF: What led you to write Inspiration and Innovation? TK: The...