Patricia Nelson Limerick, the nationally renowned history and environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, spoke at a White House symposium organized by First Lady Laura Bush on "Women of the West: The Literary Legacy of Women in the American West."
Limerick presented the Sept. 17 keynote address on three authors: Willa Cather, Edna Ferber and Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Her audience of about 150 people in the White House included First Lady Laura Bush, Lynne Cheney, Joyce Rumsfeld and Pam Houston, author of "Cowboys Are My Weakness."
Other speakers at the event included Susan Power, author of "The Grass Dancer" and "Roofwalker," Brady Udall, author of "Letting Loose the Hounds" and "The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint," the producer of PBS's "Frontier House" and actress Melissa Gilbert.
Limerick, who also is chair of the CU-Boulder Center of the American West, will post her talk on the center's Web site at . Last fall, the study of the American West was named one of the CU-Boulder campus's top three areas of excellence in a report prepared for the Governor's Blue Ribbon Panel on Higher Education.
For information about the Center of the American West call (303) 492-4879.