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

 Strand Union Building - Montana State University - Ballrooms B & C

May 9-11, 2019

 

Thursday, May 9

1:00-2:30--“Making Wallace Stegner and the West”

Chair: Susan Kollin, Director, Ivan Doig Center, Montana State University

 

Michael J. Lansing, Department of History, Augsburg University

“Creation as Erasure: Wallace Stegner and the Making and Unmaking of Regions”

 

Flannery Burke, Department of History, Saint Louis University

“When Nature Became Culture: Wallace Stegner and Bernard DeVoto, Men of Western Letters”

 

Paul Formisano, Department of English, University of South Dakota

"Exploring Stegner's Geography of Hope in an Age of Uncertainty"

 

2:45-4:15--“Hope in Hard Times: Public Lands in the 21st Century”

Chair: Amanda Hendrix-Komoto, Department of History and Philosophy, Montana State University

 

Leisl Childers, Department of History, Colorado State University

Adam Sowards, Department of History, University of Idaho

“Hope in Public Lands: A Conversation”

 

Julie Lester, Department of Political Science, Middle Georgia State University

“A Not So ‘Quiet Crisis’: The Trump Administration and America’s Public Lands”

 

6 PM-7:30 PM--Opening Lecture and Reception, Bozeman Public Library

Professor Mark Fiege, Wallace Stegner Chair in Western American Studies, Montana State University

“The Other Wallace Stegner”

  

Friday, May 10

 9:00-10:30--“The Many Rooms of Wallace Stegner”

Chair—Bill Wyckoff, Department of Earth Sciences, Montana State University

 

Rob Briwa, Department of Earth Sciences, Montana State University

“Toponyms and the Creation of a North American West in Wallace Stegner’s Wolf Willow”

 

Jericho Williams, Department of English, Spartanburg Methodist College

“’Who Remembers in My Way . . .? Traversing the Interior Rooms of Childhood in Wallace Stegner’s Wolf Willow”

 

Melody Graulich, Department of English and American Studies, Utah State University

“The Education of Wallace Stegner”

  

10:45-12:15--“The Uncertain West”

Chair: Julia Haggerty, Department of Earth Science, Montana State University

 

Jacob Burg, Department of English, Brandeis University

“Wallace Stegner’s Anthropocentric (Non)Self”

 

Kate Ryan, Department of English, Montana State University

"Rethinking Relations in Private Forest Stewardship"

 

Robert Wilson, Department of Geography, Syracuse University

“The American West as Unlivable Space: Aridity, Adaptation, and Resilience in an Era of Climate Chaos”

 

12:30-1:30--Keynote Lecture and Luncheon

Chair: Mark Fiege, Wallace Stegner Chair in Western American Studies and Department of History and Philosophy, Montana State University

 

Professor Robert Keiter, Director of the Wallace Stegner Center, Wallace Stegner Professor of Law, and University Distinguished Professor, University of Utah

“Revisiting ‘The Marks of Human Passage:’ Lessons from the Dinosaur and Bears Ears National Monument Controversies”

  

1:45-3:15--“Contested Wests”

Chair: Kristina Martin, Montana PBS and Montana State University

 

Jennifer Dunn, Department of History and Philosophy, Montana State University

“Superfund: Libby’s Reluctant Acceptance”

 

Jerome Tharaud, Department of English, Brandeis University

“Geographies of Hope, Cultures of Scarcity”

 

Michael Childers, Department of History, Colorado State University

“Revisiting America’s Best Idea”

 

 3:30-5:00--“Stegner and Beyond”

Chair: Mary Murphy, Department of History and Philosophy, Montana State University

 

Alexandra Hernandez, National Park Service

“The American West as Exploited Space: From Resources to People”

 

Jeremy Johnston, Buffalo Bill Center of the West

“The Buffalo Bill Antidote: Wallace Stegner as Western Historian”

 

Sara Gregg, Department of History and Environmental Studies, University of Kansas

“Keystone Mutualists: Other Inhabitants of Wallace Stegner’s Great Plains”

 

6:30 PM  Symposium Banquet

The Beall Center - 415 North Bozeman Avenue

 

Saturday, May 11

 9:00-10:30--“Stegner Unbound”

Chair: Kary Smout, Department of English, Washington and Lee University

 

Michael Brown, Department of Philosophy, Creighton University

“Sludge in the Cup: Wallace Stegner’s Philosophical Ambition and Death by Grizzly”

 

Andi Powers, Program in American Studies, Montana State University

“American Fantasies and Imagined Histories: Stegner, Story, and the West”

 

Matthew Stewart, Department of History, Syracuse University

“Marking the Sparrow’s Fall? Death, Mourning, and Mobility in Wallace Stegner’s West”

 

10:45-12:15--“Traces”

Chair: Alex Harmon, Program in American Studies and Department of English, Montana State University

 

Zak Breckenridge, Environmental Humanities Graduate Program, University of Utah

“Wallace Stegner, Material Agency, and Environmental Affect”


Dan Hanson, Program in American Studies, Montana State University

“‘There’s Ghosts in Them Thar Hills!’: Understanding the Spectral Layers of Haunting and Heritage in the Ghost Town of Bannack, MT ”

 

Nancy Cook, Department of English, University of Montana

“Annals, Anxieties, and Alterations of Influence: The Legacies of Stegner and the Stegner Fellowships in a Changing American West”

 

  12:30 – 1:30 – Lunch and Conference Wrap-up