Wallace Stegner and the Changing American West: Reimagining Place, Region, Nation, and Globe in an Era of Instability

 

Sponsored by the Ivan Doig Center for the Study of the Lands and Peoples of the North American West and the Wallace Stegner Chair in Western American Studies.

May 9-11, 2019 || Montana State University--Bozeman

 

About the Symposium

At this symposium, we will explore the state of the North American West and its study through the lens of Wallace Stegner’s life, work, and legacy. Presenters will revisit and reinterpret Stegner and also reconsider Stegnerian themes in light of the political, economic, and ecological tumult of our times. What aspects of Stegner’s life and work have enduring value? How do contemporary issues of Indigenous sovereignty, gender inequality and feminism, immigration, the status of refugees, extreme economic disparities, and changes to the Earth System, especially global warming, alter our understanding of the West and the ways that Stegner envisioned it? How might our efforts to grapple with these issues compel us to reimagine the western past? How might Stegner and his work—critiqued, revised, updated—help us negotiate our unsettled present and point us toward alternative futures?

 Stegner Symposium banner

Symposium Lodging

We have reserved rooms with Montana State University's on-campus housing for those attending the symposium. If interested, you can learn more about the amenities they offer at their Summer Conference & Short Term Housing webpage. To register for a room, please use the following link: https://starbright.msu.montana.edu/StarRezPortalXConference/76974F41/23/387/Home-Home.