The Stegner lectures are sponsored by the Wallace Stegner Chair in Western American Studies and continues the legacy of the late Wallace Stegner, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, short story writer, environmentalist and historian who is now often called the “Dean of Western Writers.” Stegner spent part of his childhood in Montana, and he notably spoke at MSU shortly before his death in 1993. Based in the MSU College of Letters and Science, the MSU Wallace Stegner Endowed Chair in Western American Studies focuses on teaching and research in history, literature and philosophy with a concentration on pressing Western issues and is supported by the Stegner Chair Endowment. The annual Wallace Stegner lecture is usually held in the spring semester.

 

March 27, 2019: Richard Ford

Appropriating the West (And Other Petty Larcenies)

October 3, 2017: Carolyn Finney

The Long Way Home: All Things Green and the Possibility of Us

Poster of 2017 Stegner Lecture with Carolyn Finney

Poster of 2017 Stegner Lecture with Carolyn Finney

 

March 6, 2017: Tiya Miles

Slavery and Freedom in the Old Northwest

March 25, 2015: Mark Fiege

Elegant Conservation: Rediscovering a Way Forward in a Time of Unprecedented Uncertainty

March 28, 2014: Louis Warren

God's Red Son: The Survival of the Ghost Dance

Poster of 2014 Stegner Lecture with Louis Warren

Poster of 2014 Stegner Lecture with Louis Warren

April 12, 2013: Rick Bass

The Landscape of Imagination
Watch the Bass's lecture on MSU's YouTube channel here

April 11, 2012: Sherry Smith

An Evening with Sherry Smith

March 9, 2011: Terry Tempest Williams

An Evening with Terry Tempest Williams

Poster of 2011 Stegner Lecture with T.T. Wiliams

Poster of 2011 Stegner Lecture with T.T. Williams

March 4, 2010: Sylvia Earle

An Evening with Sylvia Earle

April 23, 2009: Peter Matthiessen

An Evening with Peter Matthiessen

November 5, 2008: David Quammen

The Man who Wasn't Darwin: Alfred Russel Wallace and the Founding of Evolutionary Biology

April 28, 2008: Jane Goodall

Reason for Hope

Poster of 2008 Stegner Lecture with Jane Goodall

Poster of 2008 Stegner Lecture with Jane Goodall

February 28, 2008: David Quammen

The Devil You Don’t Know: Cancer as an Infectious Disease

October 11, 2007: David Quammen

Thirteen Dead Gorillas: Zoonotic Disease and the Future of Human Health

Poster of 2007 Stegner Lecture with David Quammen

Poster of 2007 Stegner Lecture with David Quammen

March 28, 2007: David Quammen

Darwin and Religion

September 18, 2006: Donald Worster

Water and Empire in the American West: Past, Present, and Future

April 16, 2006: Richard White

Failure: The Transcontinental Railroads and the Making of Western Modernity

Poster of 2006 Stegner Lecture with Richard White

Poster of 2006 Stegner Lecture with Richard White

April 15, 2005: William Cronin

Saving Nature in Time: The Past and Future of Environmentalism

February 23, 2002: Alexander Saxton

Two Western Writers on Nature and US

 

April 15, 1999: T.H. Watkins

The Land Ethic: The Utterance of an American Isaiah

April 16, 1998: Ann Zwinger

Writing the Wild: Landscape in Fiction and Non-Fiction

Poster of 1998 Stegner Lecture with Ann Zwinger

Poster of the 1998 Stegner Lecture with Ann Zwinger

April 16, 1996: Charles Wilkinson

The Deer by the Road, Judge Wells and Home Dance: A Quarter Century's Impressions of the Endurance of Native Sovereignty

April 14, 1994:  Patricia Nelson Limerick and Jeffrey Limerick

Living Right in the Rockies: The Impact of Wallace Stegner's Work on Western Architecture

September 30, 1992: Wallace Stegner

Reading from Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs



 

 

 

Poster of 1992 Stegner Lecture with Wallace Stegner

Poster of 1992 Stegner Lecture with Wallace Stegner