Limerick knew that her audience, about seventy-five county residents, included both supporters and opponents of the protest. A local man had told her about a past confrontation between the two sides in which many had likely carried firearms.
He said he thought that if someone had dropped a book people might have started shooting. Limerick wore a black Western-tailored shirt embroidered with turquoise and purple flowers, and a black skirt. Her hair is straight, parted on the left, and two feet long. When she was twenty, she happened to appear on a CBS news special having to do with a history project she put together in college, at the University of California Santa Cruz, that attempted to build bridges between students and senior citizens.
We offer film screenings, panel discussions, public readings, and much more. Our aim is to help our students become discerning citizens and leaders in any of the fields that they may explore in their futures. We also work to provide community — a hub where students on a large campus can feel at home. To this end we sponsor a wide range of opportunities, inviting students to venture beyond classrooms and textbooks and to interact with leading scholars, writers, public servants, and faculty members.
Come on in and take a look at our offerings. Through a series of courses, projects, networking events and summer programs, graduate students, postdoctoral students and faculty will combine their historical knowledge with practical skills. Under the guidance of mentors, participants will craft responses to recurring issues in the West, including wildfires, natural resource management and the challenges and opportunities facing native peoples.
The Center of the American West works on issues as diverse as the West itself. Limerick has dedicated her career to bridging the gap between academics and the general public and to demonstrating the benefits of applying historical perspective to contemporary dilemmas and conflicts. This is where she began to feel a sense of mission and opportunity, which has guided career work ever since.
But her work, which aims at more inclusive accounts of history, has not come without criticism. Some were not enthusiastic about her book — particularly older Western American historians, claiming it was a condemnation of white men.
This mission would eventually be the blueprint for what became the CAW, which she co-founded alongside Charles Wilkinson in while working as a CU professor. In examining the importance of 19 th -century Chicago, Cronon points out the problems with ideas of Western independence. In both of these works, as with Limerick, environmental history looms large. There are several minor missteps in The Legacy of Conquest , many of which Limerick admits to in the preface to the reprint.
For one, she does not investigate the role of fur traders in the West, which would have given her an avenue to explore more fluid conceptions of identity. Many of the issues she discussed remain unresolved: issues about resource conservation, immigration, and the management of nature seem as relevant today as they did in the s — or even the s. If anything, Limerick seems to run the risk of overselling her case. It is a somewhat distracting diversion from the technique that Limerick employs in her other chapters.
Her argument about continuity is most effective when woven within the larger narrative, not considered separately. Instead of drawing connections, it can seem as though Limerick is only pushing her agenda — perhaps the danger of any historian venturing into the present. Additionally, perhaps because many of the themes she addresses have been long-adopted by the historical profession, the reader is often willing to accept her ideas before Limerick has concluded her argument.
These issues are minor.
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