Pilster Great Plains Lecture

The 2023 Pilster Great Plains Lecture & Sandoz Symposium will take place Sept. 28-30 on the campus of Chadron State College in Chadron. The Thursday night Pilster Great Plains Lecture, featuring Dr. Andrew Graybill, will be held at the Chadron State College Student Center Ballroom and is free and open to the public. The Great Plains is a region that is difficult to define and often overlooked and misunderstood. Historian Andrew Graybill traces one early effort to give the Great Plains its due. In his most important book, The Great Plains (1931), leading western historian Walter Prescott Webb (1888-1963) emphasized the significance of the environment as a historical actor in its own right. Yet the book is marred by considerable shortcomings, among them Webb’s wincing racism. In his talk highlighting the recent 2022 reissue of the book (University of Nebraska Press), Graybill explores the volume’s notable limitations while arguing for its enduring vitality. Andrew Graybill is a professor of history and director of the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He is the author or editor of four books, including The Red and the White: A Family Saga of the American West (Norton/Liveright, 2013). He taught at the University of Nebraska from 2003-2011. Mari Sandoz, 1896-1966, is celebrated for her histories of the Native Americans and homesteaders living on the High Plains. While Ms. Sandoz lived and wrote in Lincoln, Denver and New York City, the subject comprising the bulk of her work was the place and the people of the High Plains where she had been born and raised, where she centered her research and gained insights into the events and personalities that populate her histories. This event will look at the High Plains and its natural and human history in hopes to create increased interest in looking more deeply into this history and attendees own local or regional stories both individually and in group settings.