Bill Lane Center Colloquia

How the West Was Spun Colloquia

Spring Series

Peter Alagona

Rearranging the Mojave: The Desert Tortoise and Land Management in the American Southwest

Peter Alagona,Visiting Assistant Professor, Bill Lane Center and
Assistant Professor, UC Santa Barbara
Tuesday, February 24, 2009 4:15 - 5:30 pm
Jerry Yang and Yoriko Yamazaki Environment & Energy Building (Y2E2) Room 300
Free and open to the public

Sally Fairfax

Partial Truths and Half Lies: Pet Peeves from 35 Years on the Public Domain

Sally Fairfax, Henry J. Vaux Distinguished Professor of Forest Policy, UC Berkeley
Tuesday, April 14, 2009 3:00-5:00 pm
Jerry Yang and Yoriko Yamazaki Environment & Energy Building (Y2E2) Room 299
Free and open to the public

Robert Wilson

Elusive Sanctuaries: An Environmental History of California's Migratory Bird Refuges

Bob Wilson, Visiting Scholar, Bill Lane Center; Assistant Professor Syracuse University
Assistant Professor, Syracuse University
Monday, May 4, 2009 3:00-5:00 pm
Jerry Yang and Yoriko Yamazaki Environment & Energy Building (Y2E2) Room 299
Free and open to the public

How the West Was Spun Colloquia

Winter Series

Wildfires in the West Forum


Thursday, January 15, 2009. 3:00–5:00 PM
Jerry Yang & Akiko Yamazaki Environment & Energy Building(Y2E2)
473 Via Ortega Betchel Conference Room (Room 299)

Free and open to the public
Co-sponsored by the Bill Lane Center for the American West and Woods Institute for the Environment

Featuring:
"The Changing Economy of Fire Prevention and Abatement over the Past Century and What this Means for the Firefighting Industry in the Future"
Stephen J. Pyne,
Regents' Professor, Department of History, Arizona State University
"The Impacts of Climate Change on Wildfires in the West and Fighting and Preventing Fires into the Future"
Anthony L. Westerling,
Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering, School of Engineering, UC Merced and Sierra Nevada Research Station
"Landscape and Ecosystem Changes at the Urban/Wildland Interface and Fighting and Preventing Future Fires"
Scott Stephens,
Associate Professor of Fire Sciences, Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, UC Berkeley
“Politics and Controversies Surrounding the Financing of Wildfires and the Settlement of Suburban Areas"
Bettina Boxall
, Reporter, Los Angeles Times
Jerry Yang and Yoriko Yamazaki Environment & Energy Building (Y2E2) Room CR101

Fall Series

Gregory Simon

Beyond 'Leave no Trace': The Perils and Promise of an Outdoor Recreation Ethic


Gregory Simon, Postdoctoral Fellow, Bill Lane Center for the American West, Stanford University
Tuesday, October 28, 2008 5:00-7:00 pm
Jerry Yang and Yoriko Yamazaki Environment & Energy Building (Y2E2) Room 299
Paul Robbins

Closing the Barn Door after the Horses Have Fled: 'Planning' in the New West

Professor Paul Robbins, Department of Geography and Regional Development, University of Arizona
Thursday, November 20, 2008 3:00-5:00 pm

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Colloquia in the North American West 2007

Between 2002 and 2007 The Center hosted a regular lunchtime speakers' series presenting the work of a diverse range of scholars, writers, and policy experts.

Climate Change and California Water

Kat Snow, News Editor - KQED-FM, 2006-2007 Western Enterprise Reporting Fellow
Scientists expect that as the earth's temperature warms, the salty seas will rise and seep into coastal aquifers and deltas, potentially contaminating the water supply. Rain and snow will fall at different times of the year and with different intensity than today, stretching the capacity of California's levees, reservoirs and pipelines. Snow will melt more quickly, threatening floods as water pours down the Sierra in the early spring, and drought as it filters from the mountains in the late summer.

The warming trend in California is already well documented: the temperature of Lake Tahoe has risen one degree in 30 years; the water level in the San Francisco Bay has risen one foot in the last 150 years, and is expected to rise another 4 inches by 2050; spring runoff now gushes earlier as a greater portion of the snow pack melts before April. The hydrological changes that accompany global warming are expected to be severe: beyond the capacity of California's current water infrastructure, practices and policies.

Immigration and Immigrants' Rights

Artur Domoslawski, Columnist - Gazeta Wyborcza, Warsaw, Poland 2006-2007 Western Enterprise Reporting Fellow

Sharks in the Sea of Cortez

Juliet Eilperin, Staff reporter - The Washington Post 2006-2007 Western Enterprise Reporting Fellow

The Two-Generation Solution: The Mechanics of Establishing American Indian Blood Quantum in the "Indian New Deal"

James Oberly, Professor of History and American Indian Studies Program, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire

As well as talks by:

* Angela Jamison, Department of Sociology, UCLA
* Dan Smith, Associate Professor, University of Florida
* Caroline Tolbert, Associate Professor, University of Iowa
* Ray Ring, Northern Rockies Editor for High Country News and Bill Lane Center Western Enterprise Reporting Fellow

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Colloquia in the North American West 2006

The All-American Canal and the Paradox of 'Efficiency': Water and Politics at the US-Mexico Border

October 18, 2006
Matt Jenkins, West Coast Correspondent for High Country News
The All-American Canal is one of the West's most significant irrigation projects, bringing water from the Colorado River to the farmland of California's Imperial Valley. Work is underway to pave the last earthen-lined portion of the Canal, saving California millions of gallons of water per year, but eliminating runoff from the Canal that benefits Mexican farmers just across the border.

Mapping the West: Describing America in an Age of Unknowns

November 9, 2006
Peter J. Kastor, Assistant Professor of History at Washington University, St. Louis
How do you describe a continent? In the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Americans struggled with this question as they sought to make sense of the shifting boundaries and populations of the North American West. This talk examines how American explorers, federal policymakers, and private publishers together attempted to make sense of the West through maps, treaties, and published travel accounts. It also examines how the worlds of policy, print, and visual culture developed together as Americans imagined a western future.

The Nature of Industrial Struggle in the Colorado Coalfields: What Can Environmental History Reveal about Strikes and Massacres in Industrializing America?

January 23, 2006
Thomas Andrews, Cal State Northridge

Gendered Responses: 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire Disaster Relief

February 7, 2006
Andrea Davieshenderson, Research Associate, Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Stanford University

Preserving Western Wilderness

February 22, 2006 Andrew Gulliford, Fort Lewis College

How the West Was East: North America and the PacificBasin before 1850

March 1, 2006
David Igler, UC Irvine

Asian Exclusion in the Americas and the Pacific in the Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Centuries

March 14, 2006 Erika Lee, University of Minnesota

The Other's Other's Other: Or How I Came to Appreciate the Complexity of Indigenous Memory Through the Crafting of Footnotes

April 10, 2006
Keith Thor Carlson, University of Saskatchewan

Samuel P. Huntington, the 'Hispanic Challenge,' and Another Failure of Intelligence

May 10, 2006
David Montejano, UC Berkeley

The Reel West: Making Documentary Films - Bill Lane Documentary Film Award Winners Colloquium

May 30, 2006
The Bill Lane Center's Documentary Film Award Winners presented their works in progress. This noontime colloquium featured a screening of Ashley Tindall's film, "Feathers and Coins." Tindall's documentary examines the impact of an Indian casino on a small New Mexican town. In addition, Erin Hudson and Kathy Huang will also discuss their films, "Long Haul," and "Miss Chinatown USA."

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Colloquia in the North American West 2005

Working Wilderness: The History of the Malpai Borderlands Group and the Future of the Western Range

October 25, 2005
Nathan Sayre, Professor, Department of Geography, UC Berkeley

Science, Activism, and Feathered Pigs: Conservation Biology and the California Condor

November 8, 2005
Peter Alagona, Doctoral Candidate, Department of History, UCLA

Policing the Great Plains: Rangers, Mounties, and the Transnational North American Frontier

December 7th, 2005
Andrew Graybill, University of Nebraska

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Colloquia in the North American West 2004-2002

Before They Went West: Engineers, Bureaucrats, and Developers in the Lower Mississippi Valley

May 18, 2005
Christopher Morris, Affiliate, Stanford Humanities Center

Taking Cover: The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, the Destruction of Stanford University, and the Politics of Great Disasters

April 20, 20056
Philip L. Fradkin, author of The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906: How San Francisco Nearly Destroyed Itself

Salt Pond Restoration: What Role Should History Take?

March 30, 2005
Laura A. Watt, Ph.D., Environmental Planner, EDAW, Inc.

Hidden in the Understory: Immigrant Labor & Forest Management in Southern Oregon

January 26, 2005
Brinda Sarathy, Doctoral Candidate, UC Berkeley Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management

Outlaw Women in the Nineteenth Century West

December 1, 2004
Susan Wyle, Stanford Lecturer in the program on Writing and Rhetoric

Johnny Appleseed, John Wayne, and Homesteading on the Extraterrestrial Frontier

November 17, 2004
Carl Abbott, Professor of Urban Studies and Planning, Portland State University

California and the West in the 2004 Presidential Election

May 27, 2004
Bruce Cain, Director of Institute for Governmental Studies, Berkeley

Rephotographing the West

May 19, 2004
Mark Klett, Arizona State University

Governing Cities in Transition: Local Policymakers React to Immigration and Change

March 3, 2004
Paul Lewis and Karthick Ramakrishnan, Public Policy Institute of California

Oyster Growers and Oyster Pirates: Public Access and Private Property in San Francisco Bay's Tidal Wetlands

January 21, 2004
Matthew Booker, Stanford University History Department

Nothing is Certain but Debt and Taxes: The Political Economy of Taxation during the California Gold Rush

December 3, 2003
Mark Kanazawa, Carleton College Economics Department

Cultural Fires and Regenerations in Yosemite

October 22, 2003
Rebecca Solnit, Independent Scholar and Author

The Forgotten Founders: Rethinking the History of the Old West

June 11, 2003
Stewart Udall, Former Secretary of the Interior

Nature, Community, & Contemporary Planning in the American West: A Lake Tahoe Case Study

May 28, 2003
Michelle Sweeney, Nevada Tahoe Conservation District

Sabotage, 'Jackass Tactics,' Indeed!: Liberal Unionists, Wobblies, and Rethinking Rocky Mountain Labor Radicalism, 1890-1912

April 30, 2003
John Enyeart, Stanford University History Department

The Irish-American West: A Hypertext Corpus of Texts and Research

March 12, 2003
Matthew Jockers, Stanford University English Department

Writing the Range of the American West

February 26, 20033
Jon Christensen, Knight Professional Journalism Fellow

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