New Mexico History Museum

Speakers for the 2011 Brainpower & Brownbags Lecture Series Announced

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 29, 2010

MEDIA CONTACT


Speakers in the 2011 Brainpower and Brownbags Lecture Series will delve into topics as diverse as the Old Spanish Trail, Hispanic land grants, Texas invasions, Billy the Kid, frontier journalism, and climate change. The annual series, organized by Tomas Jaehn of the museum’s Fray Angélico Chávez History Library, is free and open to the public (and, yes, you can bring a lunch). Each lecture begins at noon in the John Gaw Meem Community Room; enter through the museum’s Washington Avenue doors.

The Brainpower and Brownbags schedule:

Wednesday, Jan. 19: Pat Kuhlhoff on “A History of the Old Spanish Trail.” Kuhlhoff is a member of Los Compadres, a support group of the History Museum and coordinator of the Palace of the Governors Downtown Walking Tours. She's also an avid scholar of the Old Spanish Trail, which opened a new era of trade with California for New Mexico colonists.

Thursday, Feb. 24: Jacobo Baca on “Land, Legitimacy, and the Rise of Reies Lopez Tijerina.” Baca is an Albuquerque historian who grew up in Peñasco, where decades-old land dis­putes are still a topic of conversation – including La Alianza Federal de Mercedes, the land-grant organization Tijerina founded in 1963, and the 1967 raid he led on the Tierra Amarilla Courthouse.

Wednesday, March 23: Spencer Herrera on “The Eyes of Texas Are Upon Us: The New Mexico Folk Play Los Tejanos and the History of Texan invasions.” Herrera is a Spanish professor at New Mexico State University. Los Tejanos is a mid-19th-century folk play recounting Texas’ failed 1841 invasion into New Mexico.

 

Thursday, April 7: Mark Dworkin on “Walter Noble Burns and the Myth of Billy the Kid.” Dworkin is a free-lance writer, editor, history educator, and book critic who lives in Toronto. In 1926, journalist-historian Burns' book The Saga of Billy the Kid ignited a fascination with the Old West outlaw that burns today. 

Wednesday, May 18: Rob Dean on “Frontier Journalism: Oldest Paper in the Newsiest Place.” Dean is managing editor of the Santa Fe New Mexican, which began publishing daily in 1867.

Wednesday, June 15: William deBuys on “A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Southwest.” DeBuys is an avid environmentalist and the author of six books, including Enchantment and Exploitation; Salt Dreams; and River of Traps, which was a finalist for the 1991 Pulitzer Prize. His latest book project is A Great Aridness, which explores the likely impact of climate change on the Southwest.

Phone number for publication: 505-476-5200



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