2007 Keynote Speaker
 Patty Limerick
is the Faculty Director and Chair of the Board of the Center of the
American West at the University of Colorado, where she is also a
Professor of History. She 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.
Limerick was born and raised in
Banning, California, and graduated from the University of California at
Santa Cruz in 1972. She received her Ph.D. in American Studies from
Yale University in 1980, and from 1980 to 1984 she was an Assistant
Professor of History at Harvard. In 1984, she joined the History
Department of the University of Colorado. In 1985 she published Dessert
Passages, followed in 1987 by her best-know work, The Legacy of
Conquest, an overview and reinterpretation of Western American history
that has stirred up a great deal of both academic and public debate.
Limerick is also a prolific essayist, and many of her most notable
articles, including “Dancing with Professors: The Trouble with Academic
Prose,” were collected in 2000 under the title Something in the Soil.
Limerick has received a number of
awards and honors recognizing the impact of her scholarship and her
commitment to teaching, including the MacArthur Fellowship (1995 to
2000) and the Hazel Barnes Prize, the University of Colorado’s highest
award for teaching and research (2001). She has served as president of
several professional organizations, advised documentary and film
projects, and done two tours as a Pulitzer Non-Fiction jurist. She
regularly engages the public on the op-ed pages of local and national
newspapers, and in the summer of 2005 she served as a guest columnist
for the New York Times. Limerick is also known as an energetic, funny,
and engaging public speaker, sought after by a wide range of Western
constituencies that include private industry groups, state and federal
agencies, and grassroots organizations.
In 1986, Limerick and CU Law
Professor Charles Wilkinson founded the Center of the American West.
During her tenure, the Center has published a number of books,
including the influential Atlas of the New West (1997), and a series of
lively, balanced, and to-the-point reports on compelling Western
issues, including What Every Westerner Should Know About Energy (2003)
and Cleaning Up Abandoned Mines (2006). Limerick and Center staff are
currently working on several projects, including a book about the role
of the Department of Interior in the West, based on the “Inside
Interior” series of interviews hosted by the Center between 2004 and
2006; the long-awaited Handbook for New Westerners; a new report on
What Every Westerner Should Know About Energy Conservation and
Efficiency; and an illustrated history of the Denver Water Board. |
