PAST PRESIDENTS’ ADDRESSES

At every conference, the past president gives the Past President’s Address. Below you’ll find links to some of them:

1989—Glen Love, “Revaluing Nature: Toward an Ecological Criticism”
1992—James Work, “Who’s Afraid of the Virginian’s Wolf?”
1993—Joseph M. Flora, “An Eastern Dude Rides West—Again”
1994—Diane Quantic, “Reimagining the West: A Consideration of the Discipline”
1996—Laurie Ricou, “Extra West”
1997—Susanne George Bloomfield, “Dancing with Our Skeletons: Some Reflections on Time”
1998—Gary Scharnhorst, “In Defense of Western Literary Biography”
1999—Robert Thacker, “Crossing Frontiers, Riding Point”
2001—Robert Murray Davis, “Part-Time Westerner”
2002—Susan Naramore Maher, “When East Meets West: A Tale of Sundry Adventures”
2003—Judy Nolte Temple, “Why in the World Study Diaries: Tales from the Road Less Traveled”
2006—William R. Handley, “An Anatomy of Feeling Western; or, The Good News about Estrangement”
2008—Ann Putnam, “Memory, Desire, and What’s ‘True at First Light’”
2009—Karen Ramirez and Nicolas Witschi, “Western Collaborations X: The Generative Power of Working Together”
2010—David Cremean, “Livin’ in These Badlands: Don’t Fence Me In—or Out”
2011—Gioia Woods, “Reinvent America and the World”
2013—Sara Spurgeon, “Incidentally Western”
2014—Richard Hutson, “Tom Sawyer and the Struggle for Recognition”
2015—17 Past Presidents recounted the WLA’s journey of where it has been and where it is going (no transcript available)
2016—Sacred and Profane West: A Conversation with Stephen Graham Jones, moderated by Susan Bernardin and David Fenimore (no transcript available)
2017—Learning from Legacies: A Conversation with Linda Karell and Kao Kalia Yang (no transcript available)
2018—A Conversation: Florence Amamoto and Eugene B. Redmond (no transcript available)
2019—Past Presidents’ Conversation: “Buried Archives of the West(ern),” with Michael K. Johnson and Emily Lutenski plus Christine Bold, Susan Nance, Kirby Brown.
2020—Alex Hunt, “Public Face West: How to Find a Wider Audience and Why We Might Oughta”