Student researchers Joe Cavanaugh and Cindy Sikkema, illustrator James Lloyd, and faculty director Tara Penry at the Thomas Wolfe Society meeting, May 2013. HWSC was a cosponsor of the conference on the theme of “Thomas Wolfe and the West,” and sponsor of the student research exhibit.
Our Mission and Activities
The Hemingway Western Studies Center supports research and events leading to an understanding of the American West.
Since 2011, primary activities for the western studies center include bringing speakers to Boise, supporting student research, and publishing books relating to Idaho and the Intermountain West. The Center cosponsored the Thomas Wolfe Society meeting in Boise in May 2013, on the theme of “Thomas Wolfe in the West.” A major current initiative of the Center is development of Western Writers Online, a peer-reviewed, open-access journal of shorter public scholarship on the writers of the North American West. WWO will launch this summer. A partner site, Western Print Culture Online, has also begun development.
Historically, the center has housed an interdisciplinary book series, the Idaho Center for the Book, and the Idaho Film Collection. Under our current organization, the Idaho Center for the Book now lives in the Art Department under the leadership of Dr. Stephanie Bacon, and the Idaho Film Collection has moved to BSU’s interdisciplinary Cinema and Digital Media program, directed by Dr. Pete Lutze of the Communication Department. The Idaho Writers Archive at Albertsons Library is another project supported by the center.
News Highlights
June 2013 – Jamie Lynn Groves (MS, Raptor Biology, expected May 2014) and Michael S. Beaudoin (MA, History, expected May 2014) will receive HWSC research grants this summer to support their respective studies of burrowing owl nesting behavior and northwest cougar management plans. Ms. Groves will present her research at the Raptor Research Foundation Annual Conference in Argentina and in poster format at BSU in Fall 2013. Mr. Beaudoin will present his findings at BSU in September 2013. Further information about the public presentations will be available in the fall. Congratulations to Jamie Lynn Groves, Michael Beaudoin, and their faculty sponsors, Dr. Jim Belthoff and Dr. Lisa Brady.
This is the second year of the HWSC summer research grant for graduate research in western studies. The grant has so far supported six graduate students from three Boise State colleges in conducting research under the direction of a Boise State faculty advisor.
May 28, 2013 - Deadline to apply for Summer 2013 research grants in western studies, open to all BSU graduate students who will return in Fall 2013. Download HWSC Research grant application 2013.
May 24-25, 2013 – BSU undergraduates Joe Cavanaugh (English, May 2014), Cindy Sikkema (English, May 2014), and James Lloyd (Art Illustration, May 2013) shared their research and creative work in a poster exhibit at the Thomas Wolfe Society meeting in Boise, under the direction of faculty advisor Tara Penry. The Thomas Wolfe Review is considering publication of the collaborative student/faculty exhibit in conjunction with an article by Penry. Printing and design costs for the exhibit were supported by the Hemingway Western Studies Center.
May 25, 2013 - HWSC director Tara Penry will give the keynote banquet address on Thomas Wolfe and the West at the annual Thomas Wolfe Society meeting, Grove Hotel, Boise.
May 24, 2013, 7:00 pm at the State Capitol building – Poet Robert Morgan will speak about Thomas Wolfe and the West at the annual Thomas Wolfe Society meeting in Boise. Location: Senate auditorium, lower floor; enter from 8th street door. A public reception will follow the talk, sponsored by HWSC.
December 2012 – Western Writers Online is one of three core projects in the nascent BSU Digital Humanities program to receive a $500,000 challenge grant from the NEH. The grant supports the creation of Idaho’s first Digital Humanities program, housed in the Arts and Humanities Institute at BSU. The other core projects included in the grant are Melville’s Marginalia (Prof Steven Olsen-Smith, director) and Stories of Idaho (Prof Leslie Madsen-Brooks, director). The Arts and Humanities Institute must raise an additional $1.5 million to qualify for the $500,000 challenge grant.
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Our Name
When Boise State University founded its Western Studies Center in the 1980s, Hemingway family members graciously allowed use of their name, honoring the celebrity writer who loved the region. To find out more about our namesake author, researchers may visit sites below. These sites are not affiliated with Boise State University or with the Hemingway Western Studies Center.
The Hemingway Society – Premier research community devoted to the author’s life and work (Please disregard the strikethrough in formatting)
Online Resources at the JFK Library – Articles, Photos, Links, and more
Hemingway in Sun Valley – Essays from the Sun Valley Guide, a free quarterly magazine
Hemingway’s love of the outdoors – Excerpt from A New Literary History of America, edited by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009)
Freelance writer Allie Baker’s Idaho-based Hemingway Project
The Hemingway home in Ketchum, Idaho, is occupied today by offices of The Nature Conservancy.
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