Center for Historical Studies

CCHS NEWS

The schedule of our annual lectures and conferences is posted under EVENTS (please click on the banner).

Our next major event is a Monday, May 20 lunch lecture by Eliott WEST on "The Greater Reconstruction: Rethinking the American West in the !9th C."

Elliott West received his B.A. from the University of Texas (1967) and his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado (1971). He joined the U of A faculty in 1979. Two of his books, Growing Up With the Country: Childhood on the Far-Western Frontier (1989) and The Way to the West: Essays on the Central Plains (1995) received the Western Heritage Award. The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado (1998) received five awards including the Francis Parkman Prize and PEN Center Award.

In 1995 West was awarded the U of A Teacher of the Year and the Carnegie Foundation‘s Arkansas Professor of the Year. In 2001 he received the Baum Faculty Teaching Award, and in 2009 he was one of three finalists for the Robert Foster Cherry Award recognizing the outstanding teacher in the nation.

Publications:

The Essential West: Collected Essays. University of Oklahoma Press, 2012.
The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story. Pivotal Moments in American History Series. Oxford University Press, 2009.
With Rodman W. Paul. Mining Frontiers of the Far West: 1848-1880. Revised and Expanded Edition. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001.
The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998.
Growing Up in Twentieth-Century America: A History and Resource Guide. Westport,CT: Greenwood Press, 1996.
The Way to the West: Essays on the Central Plains. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995.
Growing Up With the Country: Childhood on the Far-Western Frontier. Histories of the Frontier Series. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989.
The Saloon on the Rocky Mountain Mining Frontier. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979.

Leopold Fellows applications are in and we will announce the 2013-2014 LEOPOLD FELLOWS in late May.

The CENTER FOR HISTORICAL STUDIES at Northwestern University was established in 2006. In 2010 it was named the Nicholas D. Chabraja Center for Historical Studies or CCHS.

[The name Chabraja is pronounced Tcha-BRAH-yah]. To read more on the naming of the Center, please click here.

The CCHS invites faculty members and graduate students who work with historical materials to participate in an ongoing conversation about the core concerns of the historical discipline. Through various lecture series and focused workshops, the Center explores shared problems related to theory, methodology, and evidence. These events attempt to reach out beyond the particular concerns of various sub-fields and examine common intellectual concerns that energize the practice of history. The Center organizes its programs in cooperation with the members of the NU history department. It also aspires to draw into its affairs a broader range of scholars and members of the Chicago community.

Each academic year the Center hosts

five to eight public lunch lectures for the History Department and the NU community
one to two public conferences (graduate student one-day conferences with an outside eminent historian as a keynote speaker),
international doctoral workshops, at locations outside the USA or on the NU Evanston campus, jointly sponsored with foreign institutions of higher learning,
a joint NU Library /CCHS public lecture on the History of the Book
other events, such as public lectures by eminent historians, public panel discussions on the role of history today, receptions honoring History Department authors of new books, and lectures especially designed to help graduate students deal with professional challenges. The Center also co-sponsors additional history activities on campus.

Upcoming CHS events can be viewed by clicking on EVENTS on the CHS banner.

The CHS has much to offer graduate students in History. Each year the Center selects two CCHS Graduate Fellows. Their fellowship includes organizing a one-day faculty and graduate student conference on a significant historical topic pertinent to their research, with an eminent keynote speaker from outside NU (see FELLOWSHIPS). An innovative program of international doctoral workshops was initiated by the CHS in 2008-2009 with events in Ireland and Germany (click on CONFERENCES for more details).

For undergraduates (both History majors and across the university) the CCHS Leopold Fellowship program offers the opportunity and means to work closely with primary historical materials under the guidance of faculty, doing actual archival faculty research and learninghow to transform raw data into historical interpretation. The first group of ten undergraduate Leopold Fellows started work in 2008-2009. The number of applications rose to 40 for 9 spots in 2009-2010, attesting to the popularity of the program. Click on LEOPOLD FELLOWS to learn more.

The CCHS also sponsors the History Society,

a gathering of undergrads from across the university,

mainly History majors, who are interested in learning

more about and discussing historians' work.