The Robert G. Athearn Lecture Series

The late Prof. Robert G. Athearn (1914–1983) was a professor of Western History at the University of Colorado at Boulder from 1947 until his retirement in 1982. An extraordinarily productive scholar, his publications included Westward the Briton (1953), Union Pacific Country (1971) The Coloradans (1976), The Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad: Rebel of the Rockies (1977), The Mythic West in Twentieth Century America (1986), and William Tecumseh Sherman and the Settlement of the West (reprint 1995).

Professor Athearn was one of the founders as well as past president of the Western History Association, and during his career held numerous positions on historical committees, academic societies, and editorial boards. His impact as a teacher was equally great, he instructed thousands of undergraduate students over the years, and trained a score of contemporary Western historians in the profession he loved. As part of his legacy, Dr. Athearn endowed a lectureship in the Department of History at the University of Colorado at Boulder to be held on topics in Western history.

The 24th Athearn Lecture

Dr. Louis S. Warren

W. Turrentine Jackson Professor of Western U.S. History at the University of California, Davis

"The Rising of God's Red Son:
The 1890 Ghost Dance Gospels and the Crisis of the Arid West"

Tuesday, October 2nd, 2012
7:00 pm
Hellems Building, Room 252

Dr. Louis Warren teaches and writes about 19th and 20th century Western U.S. history: immigration, environmental issues and demographic impacts. A specialist in environmental history, Warren is an authority on the history of conflicts between hunting and animal rights, no-growth and slow-growth movements, and Buffalo Bill Cody’s legacy. His acclaimed book, Buffalo Bill’s America: William Cody and the Wild West Show (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), has won numerous awards, including the 2007 Beveridge Prize from the American Historical Association, the Western Writers of America Spur Award in 2005 and the 2005 Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize. He also wrote The Hunter’s Game: Poachers and Conservationists in Twentieth-Century America (Yale University Press, 1997), which won the Western Heritage Award for Outstanding Non-fiction Book from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center. Professor Warren is the Editor-in-Chief of Boom: A Journal of California.
 

Previous Athearn Lectures: