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Distinguished Speakers Series

In 2012, the WHA launched a Distinguished Speaker Program to recognize exceptional scholars of the American West. The initial list of distinguished speakers consists of all living past presidents. Each year, the WHA President will select five outstanding individuals to add to the list of distinguished speakers. To reserve a distinguished speaker for your lecture, campus event, or conference, please contact the WHA Office at wha@westernhistory.org

WHA Distinguished Speakers

Stephen Aron | Alternative Origins of Western American History, Daniel Boone

Katherine Benton-Cohen |

Kathleen A. Brosnan | Boosterism in Colorado Springs, Denver and the Regional Economy, Energy Capitals in the Larger West, The Overland Trail, Phylloxera in Napa Valley

Richard M. Brown |

Keith Carlson | Aboriginal History of British Columbia, Coast Salish Ethnohistory, Aboriginal Memories and Understandings of the British Crown, Community Engaged History for the 21st Century, Indigenous Dreams and Historical Consciousness, US Coast Salish Treaty Rights, Orality, Literacy, and Indigenous Prophecy, The Lynching of Louie Same, The History of Sasquatch

Sarah Carter | 

Connie Chiang |

Philip J. Deloria |

William Deverell | The Civil War and the West, Environmental History of Los Angeles

Iris H. W. Engstrand | California

Richard W. Etulain | Abraham Lincoln and the American West, Calamity Jane: A Life and Legends, Buffalo Bill, Larry McMurtry, Wallace Stenger: Wise Man of the American West

Jared Farmer | The Colorado Plateau, The Colorado River, Landscape History, Mormon History, National Parks, Western Environmental History, Western Sacred History, Western Tourism and Outdoor Recreation

Janet Fireman | Traveling the Great Central Valley, William Randolph Hearst

Donald L. Fixico | The American Indian Mind and Indigenous Knowledge, Self-determination and Modern Tribal Governments, Red Power and the American Indian Movement, American Capitalism and Tribal Natural Resources, Indian Territory and Manifest Destiny in the West

David G. Gutierrez |

Albert L. Hurtado | How the Horse Made the American West

Anne Hyde | The Fur Trade, Race History

Margaret Jacobs | Maternalism and Settler Colonialism in the American West and Australia, Transnational Indigenous Women's Activism and Child Welfare

Susan L. Johnson |

Patricia Nelson Limerick | The West and Water

Kelly Lytle Hernandez |

Mary Murphy |

Josh Reid | American Indians and the Environment, Fishing in the Pacific: Treaty Rights, Whaling, and Sealing, Exploration and Encounters in the Pacific Northwest, Indigenous Exploration in the Pacific Northwest and the Pacific, Indigenous Methodologies, Maritime Fur Trade, 19th Century American Indian Entrepreneurs, Sovereignty and Self Determination

Virginia Scharff |

Sherry L. Smith | Hippies, Indians and the Fight for Red Power

Quintard Taylor, Jr. | African American History in Texas, the Southwest, and in the Pacific Northwest, Buffalo Soldiers

Samuel Truett | Empire's Castaway: An Adventurer and the Nineteenth-Century World, Borderlands, Imperial and Indigenous Power and Mobility in North America and the China Seas, America's Ghosts: Ruins and Lost Worlds in the American Imagination, Transatlantic Cowboys: The Mythic West in Europe from Old Shatterhand to Tex Willer

Louis Warren |

Elliot West | Lewis and Clark, The Telegraph and the Making of the West

Liping Zhu | Chinese Inclusion in Telling Western Stories, Chinese Exclusion and American Sectional Politics, A Chinaman's Chance on the American Frontier


Western History Association

University of Kansas | History Department

1445 Jayhawk Blvd. | 3650 Wescoe Hall

Lawrence, KS 66045 | 785-864-0860

wha@westernhistory.org 


The WHA is located in the Department of History at the University of Kansas. The WHA is grateful to KU's History Department and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences for their generous support!