Stephen Aron, an American historian whose scholarship focuses on the American West and frontier history, will deliver the Thomas D. Fulbright Lecture in American History as part of the Assembly Series on Wednesday, March 19 at 11 a.m. at Washington University. The lecture is free and open to the public and will be held in Graham Chapel, located just north of Mallinckrodt Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd., on the Washington University campus. His lecture is titled “The Tragedy of William Clark: The Missouri Years of Lewis and Clark.”
Aron is associate professor of history at the University of California at Los Angeles and the director of the Autry Institute for the Study of the American West. The institute supports the scholarly, interpretive and educational activities of the Autry Museum of Western Heritage. The museum presents a rich cultural tapestry of the American West.
Aron’s research has been widely published in scholarly journals and books. His books include: How the West Was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky from Daniel Boone to Henry Clay (1996); Trading Cultures: Essays on the Worlds of Western Merchants (2001) co-edited with Jeremy Adelman; and Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A History of the Modern World from the Mongol Empire to the Present (2002) co-authored with Jeremy Adelman, et. al.
In How the West Was Lost, Aron examines how the Indian and European cultures collided and coincided, and why this mixed world did not last. He seeks to explain how the possibilities of a common ground were lost and the impact that had on Indians, settlers and slaves. A reviewer said one of the book’s great strengths was the incorporation of “ethnohistory with settlement history in the same narrative.”
In Worlds Together, Worlds Apart, the publisher says Aron and his colleagues “take a global, non-Eurocentric approach, highlighting three key themes in world history: cultural exchange and interaction, conflict and resistance, and alterations in the balance of power.”
His current research projects include a book on Daniel Boone’s legacy and another on the Missouri frontier.
Aron received his doctorate in history from the University of California at Berkeley in 1990.
For more information on the Assembly Series lecture, call (314) 935-4620 or visit the Assembly Series web page (http://assemblyseries.wustl.edu).