The Wallace Stegner Chair in Western American Studies at Montana State University was established to honor more than half a century of wisdom and commitment that novelist, historian, and conservationist Wallace Stegner contributed to the culture and society of the West.
Wallace Stegner (1909-1993) was a nationally important figure of American letters, winner of the both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his fiction, a revered member of the prestigious National Institute and Academy of Arts and Letters, Phi Beta Kappa, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a teacher who helped to invent an entire creative discipline and along the way guided two generations of American writers toward fulfillment of their talents.
Above all, however, Stegner was a westerner. He had grown up with the feel of the Great Plains wind on his skin and the sight of
mountains in his eyes. He found the roots of his own life as a writer in the West, built upon that experience to produce some of the most enduring literature in the American lexicon, as well as some of the region’s most important histories, and spent his public life in defense of the natural world that gives the West its power to inspire and sustain us.
Stegner applauded the choice of Montana State University as the site of a chair in his name. “There’s an awakening in the rest of the country to the West and what it’s about,” he wrote shortly before his death in the spring of 1993. “And the West is waking up to itself. A chair in Western American Studies at MSU is a splendid way to inform the West about itself.”
Stegner knew that MSU’s traditions of scholarship had made the university central to an ongoing national reexamination of Western American history, literature, and conservation. A chair in Western American Studies, he believed, could build upon that MSU tradition and help to clarify the West’s sense of its own place in the national life.
Equally important, Stegner knew that the people of the West were increasingly challenged by fast-changing economic, social, and environmental trends. An MSU chair in Western American Studies that also embraced a wide spectrum of thinking about the West’s future from landscape and community preservation efforts to region-wide economic planning could provide crucial help to those seeking to achieve, in Stegner’s words, “a society to match its scenery.”
For more information about the Wallace Stegner Chair in Western American Studies, call the MSU History and Philosophy Department (406) 994-4396 or contact the MSU Foundation
406) 994-2053.
“It would promise us a more serene and confident future if, at the start of our sixth century of residence in America, we began to listen to the land, and hear what it says, and know what it can and cannot do.” —Wallace Stegner
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STEGNER CHAIR:
David Quammen
email:
EDUCATED: by Jesuit priests and Southern novelists
ACADEMICS: Yale University B.A. 1970
Oxford University B. Litt. 1973
Stegner Lecture Podcast
Thirteen Dead Gorillas
BOOK PUBLICATIONS:
To Walk the Line (novel) Knopf 1970
The Zolta Configuration (novel) Doubleday 1983
Natural Acts (essays) Nick Lyons 1985
The Soul of Viktor Tronko (novel) Doubleday 1987
Blood Line (short fiction) Graywolf 1988
The Flight of the Iguana (essays) Delacorte 1988
The Song of the Dodo (nonfiction) Scribner 1996
Wild Thoughts from Wild Places (essays) Scribner 1998
The Boilerplate Rhino (essays) Scribner 2000
Monster of God (nonfiction) W.W. Norton 2003
The Reluctant Mr. Darwin (biography) W.W. Norton 2006
AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS:
Rhodes Scholarship 1970
National Magazine Award (Essays and Criticism) 1987
Guggenheim Fellowship 1988
National Magazine Award (shared, Special Interests) 1994
Academy Award (Literature) from the American Academy of Arts and Letters 1996
BP Natural World Book Prize (Great Britain) 1996
John Burroughs Medal for nature writing 1997
New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award 1997
Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction 1997
Ph.D. (honorary), Montana State University 2000
PEN/Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award for the Art of the Essay 2001
National Magazine Award (Essays) 2005
Honorary membership, Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society 2005
JOURNALISM:
From 1981 through 1995, I wrote a monthly column for Outside magazine. I’ve also published in Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, National Geographic, NG Adventure, Rolling Stone, The New York Times Book Review, Smithsonian, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and other magazines.
ANTHOLOGIES:
Some of my short works, fiction and nonfiction, have been reprinted in a number of anthologies, including Writers of the Purple Sage (edited by Russell Martin and Marc Barasch, 1984), Literary Journalism (edited by Norman Sims and Mark Kramer, 1995), American Short Story Masterpieces (edited by Raymond Carver and Tom Jenks, 1987), The Portable Western Reader (edited by William Kittredge, 1997), The Best American Essays 1989 (edited by Geoffrey Wolff), The Best American Essays 1999 (edited by Edward Hoagland), The Best American Travel Writing 2001 (edited by Paul Theroux), The Best of Outside: The First Twenty Years (from the editors of Outside), The Best American Travel Writing 2005 (edited by Jamaica Kincaid), and The Best American Science Writing 2005 (edited by Alan Lightman). I served as guest editor of The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2000.
LECTURES:
I’ve lectured at the Library of Congress (Bradley Lectures, 2001), the University of Tennessee School of Journalism (Alfred and Julia Hill Lecture, 2002), the University of Missouri (Jane and Whitney Harris Lecture, 2003), the Medill School of Journalism (2002), the Harvard Museum of Natural History (2003, 2006), the California Academy of Sciences ( 2003, 2006), and other academic, scientific, and literary institutions, including Dartmouth College, Yale University, the University of Michigan, the Bell Museum (Minneapolis), Middlebury College, the University of Washington, Pondicherry University (India), Northern Territory University (Australia), and the Mercantile Library (Cincinnati).
APPOINTED POSITIONS:
Contributing Writer, National Geographic, October 2006—
Wallace Stegner Distinguished Professor of Western American Studies, Montana State University, January 2007—
PERSONAL:
My more fevered avocations are telemark skiing, ice hockey, and bicycle racing. I moved to Montana thirty-three years ago for the trout fishing, and I stayed for the snow and the privacy and the bracing Scandinavian gloom. I live in a house of revivified old wood on the south side of Bozeman, Montana, with my wife, Betsy Gaines (a conservationist), two rescue-case dogs (a borzoi and a maremma), and a dog-loving alley cat named Skipper.
Contact
The Department of History and Philosophy
Montana State University
P.O. Box 172320
Bozeman, MT 59717-2320
Tel 406-994-4396
Fax 406-994-7420
