Events

The Ivan Doig Center for the Study of the Lands and Peoples of the North American West, in partnership with Montana State University’s Native American Studies, English, and American Studies Departments, is pleased to announce author Sterling HolyWhiteMountain in conversation with Doig Center Director Daniel Grant as part of the Doig Center’s “Perspectives on the American West” speaker series.

HolyWhiteMountain MSU Calendar Event

A panel discussion with the Authors and Editors of "A Watershed Moment: The American West in the Age of Limits"  to discuss the themes of the book – the myth of the West and the local (unsustainable) impacts that this myth has had both ecologically and socially.  

Free and open to the public. 

This event is co-hosted by C-STES, and American Studies

Wateshed Moment MSU Calendar Event

Montana Poet Laureate, Chris La Tray speaks on his new book, "Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian's Journey Home"

Free and open to the public.

This event is cosponsored by History & Philosophy, Modern Languages, and American Studies

La Tray MSU Calendar Event

Doctoral student Greg LaDonne is the 2024 recipient of MSU’s DCTA Award. LaDonne is a fourth-year Ph.D candidate at UC Colorado Boulder. He is focusing on “rewilding” and posits that the concept is not new, but a mainstream idea in environmental history that informs present-day decisionmaking by nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and individuals.

LaDonne MSU Calendar Event

Ancient lake sediments in northwestern Montana contain one of the most significant repositories of fossil insects in the world. The 46-million-year-old site is the only known source of fossilized blood-engorged mosquitos and, extraordinarily, remnants of their last blood meals. Dr. Dale Greenwalt, a researcher at the National Museum of Natural History, has spent more than a decade studying these specimens and their biomolecules–pigments and proteins that were once integral components of living insects. His work exemplifies a new field of paleobiology; using fossils containing ancient proteins, viruses, and DNA, paleobiologists around the world are uncovering the secrets of organisms–dinosaurs, plants, and humans–from the deep past. Please join us for Dr. Greenwalt’s presentation on how an emerging science that studies the biomolecules of fossils is transforming our understanding of the evolution of life on Earth.

Co-hosted by Montana State University’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Ivan Doig Center for the Study of the Lands and Peoples of the North American West.

 Greenwalt MSU Calendar Event

Historians Betsy Gaines Quammen and Leisl Carr Childers will lead an evening of conversation on the state of the American West. The scholars will address issues raised in Gaines Quammen’s new book, “True West: Myth and Mending on the Far Side of America,” including the myths and conflicts that affect the contemporary West and its citizens.

Gaines Quammen received a doctorate from MSU in religion, history and the philosophy of science. Her dissertation focused on Mormon history and the roots of armed public land conflicts in the United States. Gaines Quammen said she is fascinated by how religious views shape relationships to landscape. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, New York Daily News and the History News Network. She is the author of “American Zion: Cliven Bundy, God and Public Lands in the West.”

Carr Childers is an associate professor of history at Colorado State University who specializes in environmental and public history of the American West. Her first book, “The Size of the Risk: Histories of Multiple Use in the Great Basin,” won the Western Writers of America 2016 Spur Award for Contemporary Nonfiction. Her research has been featured on PBS “Frontline,” Nevada Public Radio's “State of Nevada” and in the High Country News. Her current projects include “Art of Ranching,” a collaboration with CSU Extension that engages youth in intergenerational storytelling; a history of the USDA Forest Service from 1960 to the present; and a history of the long Sagebrush Rebellion in the context of climate change.

 Gaines Quammen MSU Calendar Event

Join Dr. Katherine Johnston as she discusses her recently published book, The Nature of Slavery. Book signing to follow with copies available for purchse. 

Free and open to the public. 

This event is co-hosted by the Ivan Doig Center and the Extreme History Project.