Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Future of Populist Politics

Text of Professor Limerick's Address

PATRICIA NELSON LIMERICK, born and raised in Banning, California, is a Western American historian with particular interests in ethnic history and environmental history. She received her B.A. in American Studies in 1972 from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her Ph.D. in American Studies in 1980 from Yale University.

From 1980 to 1984, Limerick taught at Harvard University as an Assistant Professor, before joining the faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder. At CU she teaches a variety of courses, both undergraduate and graduate, on the American West, as well as the introductory American history survey course. She is the Chair of the Board of the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado and the Associate Director of CU’s Minority Arts and Sciences Program, where she teaches a Summer Bridge class on writing for entering freshmen of color. She is the recipient of a number of awards and honorary appointments — State Humanist of the Year, 1992, from the Colorado Endowments for the Humanities; recipient of the University of California, Santa Cruz 1990 Alumni Achievement Award; and Official Fool of the University of Colorado from 1987 to 2008 (the appointment was arranged to run one year longer than Coach Bill McCartney’s fifteen-year contract). In 1995, she was named a MacArthur Fellow.

Limerick has published a wide variety of books, articles and reviews. Her best known work, The Legacy of Conquest, has had a major impact on the field of Western American History. In addition to numerous scholarly articles and book reviews, she has written frequent columns and op-ed pieces for The New York Times, USA Today, the Denver Post, the Daily Camera, The Chronicle of Higher Education and the Rocky Mountain News. Her books in progress include Something in the Soil (a collection of essays) and The Atomic West, both under contract with W. W. Norton. More recently, she is a contributor to The Atlas of the New West, edited by William Riebsame and published by W. W. Norton.

An advocate of taking academic knowledge outside the bounds of the university, Limerick has spoken to audiences as diverse as the American Association of Law Schools, the Bureau of Land Management Summit Conference, the Australian and New Zealand American Studies Association, the Mormon History Association, the International High Level Radioactive Waste Conference and a National Aeronautics and Space Administration conference on the future of space exploration. She has served on a number of advisory boards and committees; most recently she has been a member of the Board of Advisors for Ken Burns’ eight-part PBS series, "The West." In 1996-1997, she was President of the five-thousand-five-hundred member American Studies Association.

• Sponsored by the Women's Educational Society (WES) Women in the West Lecture Fund and the Hulbert Center for Southwestern Studies. The Women in the West Lecture Fund was established by the WES to support the Colorado College Southwest Studies program. The lecture series brings prominent Western scholars and historians to campus every year to teach and lecture. Founded in 1889, WES has supported scores of programs and projects at Colorado College over the past one hundred years and is particularly committed to providing scholarships. In 1889, WES provided the funding to build Montgomery Hall.