MacArthur 'genius' to lecture on Western history

January 12, 2005 | LOGAN — "Irony, Tragedy and Hope in American Western History" is the topic of a public lecture by Patricia Nelson Limerick Jan. 19 at the Logan LDS Tabernacle. This is a rescheduling of the lecture, which was originally planned for November 2004, but was canceled when Limerick became ill.

Limerick, professor of history at the University of Colorado, is visiting Utah State University as an L.T. and J.T. Dee Visiting Scholar under a program administered by the Mountain West Center for Regional Studies. She is best known for her book The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (1987), which helped usher in a new approach to Western history (known as "new Western history"), in which many assumptions of earlier approaches were questioned.

She was a recipient of one of the MacArthur Foundation's "genius grants" from 1995-2000, and she was an adviser on Ken Burns' documentary The West. She has recently turned her attention to the history of the West’s natural resources and is a co-author of What Every Westerner Should Know About Energy, published by the Center of the American West in 2003.

The lecture begins at 7 p.m. and admission is free. Limerick will also visit several campus classes for in-depth discussions during her visit.

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