Past Events

The Center of Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College celebrates the Summer Solstice on Friday, June 21, 2019. Doors open at 6:00 a.m. At the dawn of the summer solstice, a spiral of sunlight makes its way across the gallery walls making for a dazzling display. This event is free of charge and is open to the public; light refreshments provided.

Join us Tuesday April 9th at 5:30 pm in the Center's Lyceum Room #120 for a preview screening of the Rocky Mountain PBS "Colorado Experience" episode (26 min) featuring Ben Nighthorse Campbell. Q&A with the production team to follow, and a birthday cake celebration for Ben!

RSVPs can be made here

The 2018-2019 Center of Southwest Studies Doctoral Fellow, Patrick Troester, will present his doctoral research/ thesis on Examining Violence in the U.S. - Mexico Borderlands and its Impact on Nation Building. Patrick is a doctoral student at Southern Methodist University. Join us on Wednesday, November 28th at 5:30 pm in the CSWS Lyceum Room, #120.

Andrew W. Mellon Opportunity for Diversity in Conservation supports undergrads from STEM/ STEAM fields of study. The weeklong workshop at UCLA/ Getty Museum in summer 2019 introduces students to museum careers in conservation, and could lead to a fully fundednternship at museum conservation labs.

INFO session: Thursday, November 15th from 1:00-2:00 pm in the FLC Student Union Vallecito Room. Light refreshments provided.

The Renaissance Palace on Main Avenue, a look at the four year building boom in Durango between the great fire of 1889 and the depression of 1893, giving the town the Victorian architectural look it has.

Judith Reynolds is an arts journalist, art historian, and political cartoonist. After a career in academia, she switched to the for-profit world of newspaper journalism and eventually became arts, then managing editor of an upstate New York paper. In 1994, Reynolds and her late husband, David, moved to Durango where she began freelancing for the Durango Herald and teaching occasionally at Fort Lewis College. 

The Center of Southwest Studies and KSUT Southern Ute Tribal Radio will host a screening of the short documentary Tribal Radio (24 minutes) on Friday, September 14^th at 5:30 pm in the Center’s Lyceum Room #120. A question and answer session with the filmmaker and KSUT staff will immediately follow. This event is free and open to the public.

Slim Woman: Louisa Wade Wetherill of Kayenta and her Navajo Friends

From 1906 to 1944, Louisa Wade Wetherill and her husband John made their home among the Navajos of the Monument Valley area. Louisa’s neighbors gave her the name Asthon Sosi, “The Slim Woman”. Their respect for her was matched by her deep respect for their traditions, beliefs, and way of life. During their decades of mutual friendship, they worked together to preserve the ancient insights they had learned from their elders. Her voluminous records provide a window into an almost-vanished, authentic approach to life that is a powerful antidote to modern artificialities. The speaker, a great-grandson of the Wetherills, will present a synopsis of Slim Woman's interesting life as illustrated by historic family photographs.

Harvey Leake has, for many years, been researching the history of his pioneering ancestors, the Wetherills, who explored the Four Corners region, discovered archaeological sites, traded with Navajo Indians, and guided visitors into the backcountry. His investigations have taken him to libraries, archives, and the homes of family elders whose recollections, photographs, and memorabilia have brought the family story to life. He curated an exhibit that is currently showing at the Edge of the Cedars Museum in Blanding entitled “On the Gleaming Way: Slim Woman and the Kayenta Navajos.” Harvey was born and raised in Prescott, Arizona and is a semi-retired electrical engineer.

Mabel Dodge Luhan & Company: Creating Southwest Modernism

Mabel Dodge Luhan—patron, muse, writer, and cultural catalyst extraordinaire—played a dominant role in shaping an American Modernism with a singular northern New Mexican flavor, one that embraced the physical and cultural landscapes and honored the cultures and traditions of Pueblos and Hispanos, to whom these Moderns looked as the basis for forging a multi-ethnic nationalism and original American art forms.

Lois Rudnick is Professor Emerita of American Studies, University of Massachusetts Boston.  She has published and lectured extensively about the artist and writer communities of New Mexico, the complex and contested issues of Anglo patronage, and American Modernism.  Her most recent book, Mabel Dodge Luhan & Company: American Moderns and the West accompanied a travelling exhibition with the same title, in 2016-2017. She is currently writing a biography of Taos Pueblo artist Eva Mirabal and her family. Mirabal was the first Native American to publish a comic strip, G. I. Gertie,  which she did while serving as a WAC during World War II.

Alice Eastwood was a renowned scientist, a botanist with a great love of adventure.
She is the embodiment of female equality; her colleagues included Alfred Russel Wallace, best known for conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection, and Asa Gray, the Harvard professor who wrote the seminal manual on American botany. 

Eastwood began her fervent career in Denver, Colorado, and came to the Four Corners on "botanizing" expeditions, basing out of the Wetherill's Alamo Ranch in Mancos.
Becoming the curator of botany at the California Academy of Sciences, a post she held for over 50 years, Eastwood was a scientific pioneer that gifted those around her with her knowledge and outgoing spirit.

Marietta Eaton served as District Archaeologist for the North Kaibab Ranger District for 15 years, served as a Science Advisor for the Bureau of Land Management for over a decade, and is currently the Manager of Canyons of the Ancients Visitor Center and Museum in Dolores, Colorado.

The Center of Southwest Studies continues its summer lecture series based on the theme, “Women in the Southwest,” with a presentation from Dr. Andrew Gulliford, Durango’s Own Olga Little, on Wednesday, July 18th at 1:30 p.m. in the Center’s Lyceum Room #120.

Across Colorado and perhaps the entire Rocky Mountains, there was only one female jackpacker who ran a string of burros carrying food, supplies, and dynamite into remote high altitude mines. On her return trips she carried heavy sacks of gold and silver ore, and at least once she packed out a deceased miner. Olga Little earned a solid reputation as a packer in the La Plata Mountains. This is the story of her more than 40 year career told from the people who knew her, and from magazine and newspaper accounts.

Andrew Gulliford is a Professor of History and Environmental Studies at Fort Lewis College. He teaches popular courses on wilderness, national parks, Western history, and environmental history. Dr. Gulliford writes columns about the west for the Durango Herald, Utah Adventure Journal, and High Country News. His book The Woolly West: Colorado’s Hidden History of Sheepscapes was just released by Texas A&M University Press.