Stegner Lectures
The Stegner lectures are sponsored by the Wallace Stegner Chair in Western American Studies and continues the legacy of the late Wallace Stegner, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, short story writer, environmentalist and historian who is now often called the “Dean of Western Writers.” Stegner spent part of his childhood in Montana, and he notably spoke at MSU shortly before his death in 1993. Based in the MSU College of Letters and Science, the MSU Wallace Stegner Endowed Chair in Western American Studies focuses on teaching and research in history, literature and philosophy with a concentration on pressing Western issues and is supported by the Stegner Chair Endowment. The annual Wallace Stegner lecture is usually held in the spring semester.
March 27, 2019: Richard Ford
Appropriating the West (And Other Petty Larcenies)
October 3, 2017: Carolyn Finney
The Long Way Home: All Things Green and the Possibility of Us
Poster of 2017 Stegner Lecture with Carolyn Finney
March 6, 2017: Tiya Miles
Slavery and Freedom in the Old Northwest
March 25, 2015: Mark Fiege
Elegant Conservation: Rediscovering a Way Forward in a Time of Unprecedented Uncertainty
March 28, 2014: Louis Warren
God's Red Son: The Survival of the Ghost Dance
Poster of 2014 Stegner Lecture with Louis Warren
April 12, 2013: Rick Bass
The Landscape of Imagination
Watch the Bass's lecture on MSU's YouTube channel here
April 11, 2012: Sherry Smith
March 9, 2011: Terry Tempest Williams
An Evening with Terry Tempest Williams
Poster of 2011 Stegner Lecture with T.T. Williams
March 4, 2010: Sylvia Earle
April 23, 2009: Peter Matthiessen
An Evening with Peter Matthiessen
November 5, 2008: David Quammen
The Man who Wasn't Darwin: Alfred Russel Wallace and the Founding of Evolutionary Biology
April 28, 2008: Jane Goodall
Poster of 2008 Stegner Lecture with Jane Goodall
February 28, 2008: David Quammen
The Devil You Don’t Know: Cancer as an Infectious Disease
October 11, 2007: David Quammen
Thirteen Dead Gorillas: Zoonotic Disease and the Future of Human Health
Poster of 2007 Stegner Lecture with David Quammen
March 28, 2007: David Quammen
September 18, 2006: Donald Worster
Water and Empire in the American West: Past, Present, and Future
April 16, 2006: Richard White
Failure: The Transcontinental Railroads and the Making of Western Modernity
Poster of 2006 Stegner Lecture with Richard White
April 15, 2005: William Cronin
Saving Nature in Time: The Past and Future of Environmentalism
February 23, 2002: Alexander Saxton
Two Western Writers on Nature and US
April 15, 1999: T.H. Watkins
The Land Ethic: The Utterance of an American Isaiah
April 16, 1998: Ann Zwinger
Writing the Wild: Landscape in Fiction and Non-Fiction
Poster of the 1998 Stegner Lecture with Ann Zwinger
April 16, 1996: Charles Wilkinson
April 14, 1994: Patricia Nelson Limerick and Jeffrey Limerick
Living Right in the Rockies: The Impact of Wallace Stegner's Work on Western Architecture
September 30, 1992: Wallace Stegner
Reading from Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs
Poster of 1992 Stegner Lecture with Wallace Stegner