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Charles Redd Center for Western Studies

Publications

A Golden Jubilee History: The Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University, 1972–2022

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Jay H. Buckley

The mission of the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies is to promote the study of the Intermountain West by sponsoring research, publication, teaching, and public programs in a variety of academic disciplines including history, geography, sociology, anthropology, politics, economics, literature, art, folklore, range science, forestry, and popular culture.

This administrative history celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Redd Center. It highlights the lives and contributions of directors, associate directors, and donors.
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Assessing the Career of Historian Thomas G. Alexander (Charles Redd Monographs in Western History)

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Jay H. Buckley

This volume highlights the career of Historian Thomas G. Alexander. Four essayists honor his work and contribution to the field of Western History. These essays were first presented at a Western Historical Society annual meeting.

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The North American West in the Twenty-First Century

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Brenden W. Rensink

In 1893 Frederick Jackson Turner famously argued that the generational process of meeting and conquering the supposedly uncivilized western frontier is what forged American identity. In the late twentieth century, “new western” historians dissected the mythologized western histories that Turner and others had long used to embody American triumph and progress. While Turner’s frontier is no more, the West continues to present America with challenging processes to wrestle, navigate, and overcome.

The North American West in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Brenden W. Rensink, takes stories of the late twentieth-century “modern West” and carefully pulls them toward the present—explicitly tracing continuity with or unexpected divergence from trajectories established in the 1980s and 1990s. Considering a broad range of topics, including environment, Indigenous peoples, geography, migration, and politics, these essays straddle multiple modern frontiers, not least of which is the temporal frontier between our unsettled past and uncertain future. These forays into the twenty-first-century West will inspire more scholars to pull histories to the present and by doing so reinsert scholarly findings into contemporary public awareness.

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  • The Redd Center published a monograph series for approximately twenty years. These monographs provided an outlet for publications that were longer than an article but shorter than a book. They also included publication of the Redd Center’s monthly lecture series. Around the year 2000 the center decided to offer a subvention for presses to help reduce the per unit costs of books or to provide special features such as color prints. The Redd Center has published books by Jessie L. Embry, Associate Director, based on the Redd Center’s oral history projects. These include books on Hispanic-American and Asian-American Latter-day Saints. Embry’s book, Spiritualized Recreation: All-Church Athletic Tournaments and Dance Festivals, was published as an ebook on the Redd Center site, and this book (as well as many others) can be found in the drop-down below. Most recently, the center has hosted summer seminars and then published the best essays in anthologies with academic presses.

    The Redd Center also offers Publication Grants for up to $3,000 to assist in the publication of important contributions to studies about the Intermountain West.

  • Redd Center Monographs, Anthologies, and Publications

    Gressley, Gene M. West by East: The American West in the Gilded Age. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1972.

    Townley, John M. Conquered Provinces: Nevada Moves Southeast, 1864-1871. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1973.

    Arrington, Leonard J., Thomas G. Alexander, and Dean May. A Dependent Commonwealth: Utah’s Economy from Statehood to the Great Depression. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1974.

    Alexander, Thomas G. ed. Essays on the American West, 1972-1973. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1974.

    Alexander, Thomas G., ed. Essays on the American West, 1973–74. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1975.

    Alexander, Thomas G., ed. Essays on the American West, 1974–75. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1976.

    Hinckley, Robert H., and JoAnn Jacobsen Wells. “I’d Rather be Born Lucky Than Rich”: The Autobiography of Robert H. Hinckley. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1977.

    Alexander, Thomas G., ed. “Soul Butter and Hog Wash” and Other Essays on the American West. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1978.

    Jackson, Richard H. ed. The Mormon Role in the Settlement of the West. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1979.

    Alexander, Thomas G., ed. The Mormon People: Their Character and Traditions. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1980.

    Melville, Keith J. Governor J. Bracken Lee and Margaret Draper Lee. Provo, UT: Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, 1980.

    Embry, Jessie L. Richardson Family History: An Oral History Study. Provo, UT: Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, 1982.

    Palmer, Richard F., and Karl D. Butler. Brigham Young: The New York Years. Provo, UT: Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, 1982.

    Alexander, Thomas G., and John F. Bluth, eds. The Twentieth Century American West: Contributions to an Understanding. Salt Lake City: Signature Books/Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, 1983.

    Alexander, Thomas G., and Jessie L. Embry, eds. After 150 Years: The Latter-day Saints in Sesquicentennial Perspective. Provo, UT: Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, 1983.

    Embry, Jessie L. La Sal Reflections: A Redd Family Journal. Anaheim, CA: Charles Redd Foundation, 1984.

    Embry, Jessie L., and Howard A. Christy, eds. Community Development in the American West: Past and Present Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Frontiers. Salt Lake City: Signature Books/Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, 1985.

    McCarthy, Max R. The Last Chance Canal Company. Salt Lake City: Signature Books/Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, 1987.

    Layton, Stanford J. To No Privileged Class. Salt Lake City: Signature Books/Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, 1988.

    Gomez, Arthur R. A Most Singular Country: A History of Occupation in the Big Bend. Salt Lake City: Signature Books/Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, 1990.

    Work, James C. Following Where the River Begins: A Personal Essay on an Encounter with the Colorado River. Salt Lake City: Signature Books/Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, 1991.

    Palmer, Richard F., and Karl D. Butler. Brigham Young: The New York Years. Salt Lake City: Signature Books/Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, rev. ed.,1992.McPherson, Robert S. Sacred Land, Sacred View. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 1992.Bartholomew, Rebecca, and Leonard J. Arrington. Rescue of the 1856 Handcart Company. Salt Lake City: Signature Books/Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, reprint, 1993.Arrington, Leonard J. Charles Redd: Utah’s Audacious Stockman. Logan: Utah State University Press/Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, 1995. Harris, John S. Second Crop: Poems by John Sterling Harris. Provo, UT: Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, 1996.Howe, Susan. Stone Spirits: Poems by Susan Elizabeth Howe. Provo, UT: Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, 1997.

    Embry, Jessie L. “In His Own Language”: Mormon Spanish Speaking Congregations in the United States. Provo, UT: Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, 1997.

    Embry, Jessie L. Asian American Mormons: Bridging Culture. Provo, UT: Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, 1999.Embry, Jessie L. North Logan Oral History Project: Lyle and Nancy Crookston Israelsen. Provo, UT: Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, 2000.Embry, Jessie L. Spiritualized Recreation: Mormon All-Church Athletic Tournaments and Dance Festivals. Provo, UT: Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, 2008, ebook.Embry, Jessie L. “En Su Propia Lengua”: Congregaciones Mormonas de Hispanoparlantes En Los Estados Unidos. Provo, UT: Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, 2009.Cannon, Brian Q., and Jessie L. Embry, eds. Utah in the Twentieth Century. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2009.Walker, Ronald W. Wayward Saints: The Social and Religious Protests of the Godbeites Against Brigham Young. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2009.

    Smith, Charlotte Palfreyman, ed. San Juan Public Lands. Provo, UT: Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, 2011.Smith, Charlotte Palfreyman, ed. Stories Told: Life on the Public Lands in San Juan County. Provo, UT: Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, 2012.

    Embry, Jessie L. ed. Oral History, Community, and Work in the American West. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2013.

    Embry, Jessie L., and Brian Q. Cannon, eds. Immigrants in the Far West: Historical Identities and Experiences. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2015.

    Hartley, William G. Faithful and Fearless: Major Howard Egan, Early Mormonism and the Pioneering of the American West. Provo, UT: Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, 2017.

    Allen, James B. Still the Right Place: Utah’s Second Half-Century of Statehood, 1945–1995. Provo, UT: Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, 2017.

    Milner, Clyde A. II, and Brian Q. Cannon, eds. Reconstruction and Mormon America. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019.

    Rogers, Jedediah S., and Matthew C. Godfrey, eds. The Earth Will Appear as the Garden of Eden: Essays on Mormon Environmental History. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2019.

    Hafen, P. Jane, and Brenden W. Rensink, eds. Essays on American Indian and Mormon History. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2019.