Center News

Interview by Kirk Siegler
As posted on KUNC’s website:

BOULDER, CO (2007-11-29) Patty Limerick has been called everything from an iconoclastic western historian to a polarizing liberal academic. She’s not sure she fits in either category. Limerick founded the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she’s also a professor of history. KUNC’s Kirk Siegler has the latest installment in our series, “Colorado Profiles.”

Listen to the interview.

By Patty Limerick and Tim Brown

On November 11, the New York Times Magazine ran an interview with Patty Limerick on the recent resurgence of Westerns in Hollywood. As part of that interview, Patty mentioned offhand that “No one is going to make a film about the 500,000 abandoned mines in the West – and that may be too small a number – a symbol of the legacy of environmental damage.” In the days that followed, Patty and the Center received several letters questioning the number she cited – a number that the Center referenced in our report on the subject, Cleaning Up Abandoned Hardrock Mines in the West: Prospecting for a Better Future – from skeptical readers who felt that the figure was overstated. We do not retreat from that calculation, but we do feel that by focusing on a data dispute these readers may be missing the larger significance of the West’s abandoned mine problem. (Read on …)

Questions for Patty Limerick
New York Times
Interview by Deborah Solomon
Published: November 11, 2007

As a professor of American history at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the chairwoman of the school’s Center of the American West, what do you make of the flurry of new films that revisit Jesse James and the town of Yuma and the empty space of the desert landscape? Just as we had an upsurge in difficult westerns when we were struggling with Vietnam, now we’re struggling with Iraq, and so we are having the same upsurge.

Right. Westerns are useful in wartime because they bolster myths about American virility and strength. Do you think westerns make men feel more competent? (Read on …)

By Jenny Shank, 11-07-07
New West – books and writers
www.newwest.net

Elections wrapped up yesterday, but things are still looking political on the regional books front. For starters, the Center of the American West’s “Words To Stir The Soul” reading is tonight on the CU Boulder campus (7 p.m., Old Main Auditorium, free). The annual event has long featured local notables reading their favorite selections from Western literature, and this year’s presentation, according the Center’s website, “honors the tireless and oftentimes thankless exertions of Colorado’s public servants” (Although this press release is unsigned, I can hear the delightful voice of the scholar Patricia Limerick, who directs the center, in that phrase). Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, who has been a “tireless” book booster, will host. (Read on …)

By Mark P. Couch
The Denver Post
Article Launched: 11/05/2007 01:00:00 AM MST
Denver & the West

Leaders are readers – at least they will be this week at an event in Boulder.

This year, the Center of the American West’s annual read-aloud event is a shout-out to and by public officials, including Lt. Gov. Barbara O’Brien and first lady Jeannie Ritter.

The literary landscape covers vast terrain: an epic history featuring Kit Carson, a poignant short story about a sick child and a letter urging respect for the environment.

Patty Limerick, director of the center, said one goal of the program is to tear down suspicions about public officials.

“I don’t like the circumstances in American thinking by which officials are inherently to be suspected,” said Limerick, a history professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. (Read on …)