Our Mission and Activities
The Hemingway Western Studies Center supports research and events leading to an understanding of the American West.
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.
Since 2011, primary activities for the Western Studies Center include book publishing, bringing speakers to Boise in the areas of western and environmental studies, supporting student research, and facilitating BSU campus and community relationships in the area of U.S. western studies. A major current initiative of the Western Studies Center is development of Western Writers Online, a hub of online information and scholarship relating to authors of the American West. WWO is scheduled to launch in June 2013.
News Highlights
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 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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