Reservations are now being taken for talks by Dr. Etulain to be presented after September 10, 2008

Abraham Lincoln: With Charity for All
This slide-illustrated presentation raises an important question: What is it
about our sixteenth president, Abraham Lincoln, that has so captured us?
Americans have venerated him for nearly a century, named him our best
president, and written more than one thousand biographies about him.
This talk suggests that Lincoln's skills as a political leader are what set him
apart, particularly his ability to work in a nonpartisan way despite his own
strong party affiliation. Dr. Etulain discusses the political genius and generosity of our most important president and asks how those skills might influence today's American politics.

Wallace Stegner: Wise Man of the American West
Wallace Stegner (1908-1993) is often described as a superlative western author and thinker—the Wise Man of the American West. He won a Pulitzer
Prize and a National Book Award for his fiction and wide critical and popular
attention for his nonfiction. He also is regularly named as one of the
leading American spokesmen for conservation. This presentation utilizes
photographs and key works to deal with Stegner's major contributions and
raises probing questions about his career as a westerner, public intellectual,
and wilderness defender. Richard Etulain interviewed Stegner and collaborated with him on a book entitled Conversations with Wallace Stegner on Western History and Literature.

The Basques: Mystery People of the American West
In the last three decades Americans have become increasingly intrigued with the influences of ethnic and racial groups on the history and culture of the United States. The Basques of the American West present a fascinating
study in this regard, and residents of western states are finding rich voices in the once silenced community history of the Amerikanuak. This presentation by Richard Etulain, himself of Basque heritage, explores how Basque experiences in the American West differ and mirror those of other ethnic and immigrant groups.

The Magic West on Film
Films about the American West have entertained audiences around the
world for more than a century. Why have these adventure stories, with their simple plots and stereotyped cowboys, Native Americans, and leading ladies, so captured our imaginations? This slide-illustrated presentation offers insights into this question through an overview of one hundred years of Western films. Classic films like Stagecoach, High Noon, and Shane are dealt with, as are leading figures like John Wayne, Gary Cooper, and John Ford. The talk also will deal with new kinds of Westerns like Little Big Man,
Geronimo, and Lone Star that have appeared more recently.

Telling Western Stories: From Buffalo Bill to Larry McMurtry
This presentation deals with the changing images of the American West as
seen through novels, histories, films, and other popular media. The speaker
shows how early images of the West treated it as a remote, wild, and uncivilized region. By World War II and into the 1960s however, writers and filmmakers were beginning to see the West as much more complex, as a place of racial and ethnic competitions and environmental conflict. Gradually the heroic characters that John Wayne and writer Louis L'Amour depicted gave way to the antiheroic protagonists of actor Clint Eastwood and of writers such as Larry McMurtry. This presentation asks us to think
about the ways we have interpreted our West and why these interpretations have so often changed in the past century and more.