Marsha Weisiger
Marsha Weisiger is an associate professor and the Rocky and Julie Dixon Chair in US Western History at the University of Oregon.
Weisiger earned her doctorate in history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She is the author of Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country, which won the Norris and Carol Hundley Award for best book from the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association and the Hal K. Rothman Book Prize for best book in environmental history from the Western History Association, among other prizes. The book examined the environmental, economic, ethnic, and gendered history of Navajo pastoralists during the New Deal era.
Weisiger teaches the history of the US West and environmental history. Her research examines conservation policy and environmental and social justice in an effort to create usable histories that foster more sustainable places.
Weisiger’s current research is on western rivers, with two planned books.
Quintard Taylor
Quintard Taylor is a specialist in African American history in the American West.
Currently, Taylor is the Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Chair of American History and professor emeritus at the University of Washington.
After earning his doctorate in the history of African peoples from the University of Minnesota, Taylor published his book In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528–1990, which examined the history of African Americans in the 19-state region stretching from the 98th meridian west to the Pacific Ocean. That examination began with the first Spanish-speaking arrivals of African descent who settled in, and often founded, major cities in the region, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Tucson, Santa Fe, and San Antonio.
Since 2008, Taylor has been the editor of the “Race and Culture in the American West” series for the University of Oklahoma Press.
David Johnson
David Johnson is a professor of history at Portland State University.
Johnson’s primary research interest is in the United States’ social and intellectual history, in particular the history of violence.
After earning his doctorate in American civilization from the University of Pennsylvania, he published the book Founding the Far West: California, Oregon, Nevada, 1840–1890 and received the 1992 award for best book from the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association.
At PSU, Johnson has received the Burlington Northern Award for excellence in teaching and scholarship (1992), the John Eliot Allen Outstanding Teaching Award (2000, 2005, and 2015), and the Branford Price Millar Award for outstanding scholarship and service (2004). From 1993 to 1996, Johnson was chair of the Department of History, and from 1997 to 2014, he was managing editor of the Pacific Historical Review.
Johnson is currently working on a book about the only woman lynched during the California gold rush.