AAR Group Proposal

As many of you know, Brett Hendrickson and I (Brandi Denison) unsuccessfully proposed a permanent group last year. Winds have shifted and we are being encouraged to resubmit the proposal this year.

You can help. If you wrote a letter of support last year, could you update it for this year? If you didn't write a letter last year, would you write one now?

The letter is brief and would simply indicate your interest in the establishment of this as a group. It would be useful if you could talk about how the group provides you with something unique, unmatched by other groups. Additionally, it would be useful if you indicated that it makes more sense to have this group meet nationally than regionally.

Please email this letter to relamwest@gmail.com. The deadline for this letter is this Friday (11/29). If you have any questions, concerns, or ideas for the future of the group, please contact us!

Graduate Student Fellowships at the Western Historical Quarterly

Applications are now welcome for the Robert M. Utley Fellowship

For 2014-2015, a total stipend of $14,000, tuition awards, health insurance, and summer research funds will be awarded.

The Editorial Fellow must enroll in USU's master's program in history. Duties at the Western Historical Quarterly (WHQ) include 20 hours a week, beginning in August, helping to select, prepare, and copyread manuscripts. The fellowship may be retained for a second year (2015-16) depending upon satisfactory progress toward the master's degree and acceptable completion of editorial assignments. During the summer of 2015, the editorial fellow will work 20 hours a week at the WHQ, with time off for research.

Applicants should send a letter of interest and a writing sample directly to the editor of the WHQ. The full application, including three letters of recommendation to the USU School of Graduate Studies, will suffice to complete the needed materials. All documents should be postmarked no later than 1 February 2014. Applicants will be notified by early March.

NOTE: The S. George Ellsworth Fellowship and the Robert M. Utley Fellowship are awarded by the WHQ in alternating years.

Funding for WHQ fellowships is provided by:
Western Historical Quarterly
USU Department of History
Robert M. Utley Endowment
S. George Ellsworth Endowment

Please address correspondence to:
Dr. David Rich Lewis, Editor
Western Historical Quarterly
0740 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT 84322-0740
USA

Email: whq@usu.edu or david.r.lewis@usu.edu
Phone: 435-797-1301 or 435-797-1299

For more information see:
Western Historical Quarterly: http://www.usu.edu/whq/index.htm
USU History Department: www.history.usu.edu
USU School of Graduate Studies: http://www.usu.edu/gradsch/

Papers Available!

The papers for our upcoming AAR meeting are now available. If you have not received an email with instructions on how to access the papers, please email me at blyndenison@gmail.com.

I'm looking forward to a great session!

Exciting New Initiative!

If you’ve browsed through your AAR program book, you may have noticed an “Additional Meeting” on Saturday morning. In previous years, there was an official AAR program unit, the Seminar on Religion in the American West, where you could get your American West fix. You may know that seminar members submitted a proposal to turn the seminar into a group; unfortunately the program committee rejected the idea, so the seminar finished its five-year run and left the AAR without a programmatic home for discussion of religion in the American West.

As a temporary solution to this sad state of affairs, a group of us have put together the exciting new Initiative for Religion in the American West (IfRAW). Sponsored this year by the Religious Studies Department of the University of Wyoming, IfRAW will hold its first meeting on Saturday, November 23, from 10-12:30. (This gives you a chance to sleep in. You’re welcome.) There are three papers, which will be available on this site SOON, that we’ll discuss. Then we’ll have a business meeting and decide our strategy for the immediate future—ways to place sessions at other meetings, when and how (and if) to propose a program unit to the AAR again, how to shape the call for papers for our next annual meeting at the AAR.

What can you do?

First, read the papers (watch this space for instructions on getting them soon) and come to the meeting ready to discuss them. Bring a friend! Our session this year is called “Theorizing Religion from the American West.” Here’s the session description:

The Initiative for Religion in the American West invites all who are interested in the topic to attend our first annual session. This session takes up the task of conceptualizing religion and re-thinking the methods of religious study, taking the North American West as the point of departure rather than as the end result of western expansion. Three pre-circulated papers examine how a western regional vantage point alters how the category “religion” itself is defined, imagined, and academically employed in the study of North American religions. In addition to considering these “theories of religion of the American West,” the session also reflects on methods of study of religion that are suited to (and respond to) the study of religious people, practices, and institutions in the region. Papers will be made available online about one month before the session; please see the Religion in the American West blog or email Quincy Newell for more information. Paper authors will make brief presentations, followed by a response and extensive discussion among all attendees. The session will conclude with a brief business meeting to plan the future of the Initiative.

Presenters:

• Catherine Newell, University of Miami, “Myth and Religion in the American West”

• Sarah Moczygemba, University of Florida, “Cowboy Churches: Walking the Line between Myth and History”

• Seth Schemerhorn, Arizona State University, “Of Pilgrimage and Parody: Don Bahr’s Principle of ‘Parody’ and O’odham Methods and Theories of ‘Writing’ History and ‘Mapping’ Territory”

Respondent: Kristy Nabhan-Warren, University of Iowa

Second, help us get the word out about this session and about the initiative more generally. Bring a friend to the session! If you’ve been to past seminar sessions, and you thought they were worthwhile, tell people. Help us create some buzz.

Third, think about where you’d like to see this initiative go in the future. Send us your ideas in advance by emailing one of our current leadership team (Brandi Denison, Brett Hendrickson, Jim Bennett, and Quincy Newell). These might be ideas about strategies for getting a new program unit, or just ideas you’d like to see in the next CFP. Click here to read the IfRAW statement of purpose and get those creative juices flowing!

Fourth, if you happen to be in leadership for another AAR program unit, think about whether you’d like to co-sponsor a session with us. Since IfRAW is not an official AAR program unit, co-sponsoring won’t get you any additional sessions. But it will help advance the IfRAW cause, and we will gladly help in recruiting high-quality presenters and respondents.

Fifth, consider whether you’d like your institution to be a co-sponsor of the IfRAW. Additional Meetings cost money—not a lot, but some—and we need institutional sponsors. If you are interested in helping with this part, contact Quincy Newell for details.

We’ll have a round-up of other AAR sessions that might interest you coming soon. In the meantime, please be sure to mark this one on your calendar!!

Autry Museum and the challenge of displaying "convergence" in Western exhibits

Here is an article that may be of interest to many of you. Published yesterday in the New York Times, it addresses many of the challenges involved in presenting a revised portrait of the American West in museum displays. Journalist and critic Edward Rothstein presents a critique of the Autry National Center of the American West's efforts to reconfigure their exhibits and shift focus away from a "Wild West" narrative to one of "convergence," which, as their website explains, is "a way of seeing the evolving story of the American West as an interwoven tapestry of cultures and peoples." As Rothstein trenchantly observes, "The main difficulty has been in the interweaving."

Here is a link to the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/23/arts/design/at-autry-national-center-in-los-angeles-histories-converge.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&adxnnlx=1379953227-89GNE8xZuNpl76mkGzmsnA