Lecture Series

Jack McElroy  Newspaper Editor and Journalist (Retired) Author Carl Magee arrived in Albuquerque in 1919 and bought The Albuquerque Journal, then launched The Albuquerque Tribune.  The newspaperman was soon at war with New Mexico’s powerful political machine. Magee later exposed the Teapot Dome bribery scandal that sent New Mexico’s first U.S. senator, Albert Fall, to prison. …

Anne Hillerman Author This presentation was recorded live on 19 September 2024 at the New Mexico History Museum. Besides providing wonderful entertainment, good fiction also expands the reader’s world. In her novels, Anne Hillerman includes references to the rich history, landscape and cultures of the Southwest. The interplay of this non-fiction information with the “who…

Bridget Harrington Michael Moore Historic Photojournalists   What started as a project to explore New Mexico has grown into a quest to create compelling images of little-known places in the state and share the stories behind them. After starting with an old-school road map, Michael Moore has now spent almost 3,000 hours researching and creating…

Robert “Bob” F. Rosebrough   Attorney and Author Gallup, New Mexico is a place that is disproportionately and simultaneously wonderful and terrible.  A reservation border town with a remarkably diverse citizenry, Gallup started out as a railroading and coal mining town with an alcohol-soaked, violent history.  As an outsider who embraced the realities of this…

Ellen Wilder Bradbury-Reid Author, Nuclear History;  Art Historian Ellen will draw on her memories of growing up as a child in Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project, and the early years following.  Her father, Edward Wilder, was part of the team which built the explosives shell for the “Fat Man” nuclear bomb  detonated over Nagasaki…

  Enrique R. Lamadrid Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Spanish University of New Mexico   José A. Rivera, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of Community and Regional Planning University of New Mexico   This will be an extended video presentation.   The talk will speak to topics drawn from their 2023 edited book Water for the People which…

Lois Ellen Frank, Ph.D. Chef ; Native Foods Historian   Walter Whitewater (Dine/Navajo) Chef    Seed to Plate, Soil to Sky is the story of eight plants that Native peoles gave to the world: corn, beans, squash, chiles, tomatoes, potatoes, vanilla and cacao. Prior to 1492, these plants only existed in the Americas. Once these…

Norma Libman Educator, Journalist What was it really like for a woman to journey west to a new life? The journey west was perilous and exciting. The journals kept by women pioneers provide details that enrich our understanding of the experience in a way that differs from and enhances the information we get from the…

This month's presentation has been a collaboration between the Friends of History and Southwest Seminars (southwestseminars.org), a Santa Fe educational non-profit which offers weekly in-person lectures featuring distinguished scholars 50 Mondays a year for the past 26 years.  This nonprofit is the recipient of important historic and cultural preservation awards and a proud partner with…

Melissa J. Homestead Professor, English and Program Faculty in Women’s and Gender Studies  University of Nebraska--Lincoln  Willa Cather and Edith Lewis lived together in New York City for nearly forty years. While Cather built her career as a novelist, Lewis worked as a magazine editor and advertising writer while also, behind the scenes, editing Cather’s…

Nick Pappas Journalist, Author In October 1913, 261 miners and two rescuers died when a massive explosion ripped through a mine operated by Phelps, Dodge & Co. in Dawson, N.M. Ten years later, a second blast claimed the lives of another 120 miners. Today, all that remains is a cemetery marked by a sea of…

Dr. William “Billy” Kiser Associate Professor of History, Department Chair, Texas A&M University—San Antonio   Click here for the presentation:  https://bit.ly/3uIjHVd   During the Civil War, Mexico's North overlapped with the U.S. Southwest in the context of diplomacy and military operations.  A disparate group of historical actors vied for power and control along the U.S.-Mexico…