Montana State’s Doig Center to host ‘Myths and Belonging in the American West’ Feb. 18

BOZEMAN - Montana State University's Ivan Doig Center for the Study of the Lands and Peoples of the North American West will host "Myths and Belonging in the American West with Megan Kate Nelson" at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 18. The event is part of the Doig Center's Perspectives on the American West Speaker Series and is free and open to the public. It will be held in the Strand Union Building's Procrastinator Theater with doors opening at 5 p.m. Light refreshments will be served.

Nelson will offer remarks based on her forthcoming book, "The Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier." Her remarks will be followed by a conversation with Doig Center Director Daniel Grant about her work and its relevance.

"We're eager to welcome Dr. Nelson, as her evocative, action-packed and historically insightful narratives about the complexities of Western pasts resonate with so many essential questions about our present and future," said Grant.

Born and raised in Colorado, Nelson is a historian and writer based in Boston with a bachelor's degree from Harvard and a doctorate in American studies from the University of Iowa. She is the author of five books, including "The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West," which was a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in History; and "Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America," which won the 2023 Spur Award for Historical Nonfiction. Her new book will be published in March.

Nelson writes about the Civil War, the American West and American culture for The New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, Slate and Time. She is an elected member of the Society of American Historians and was the 2024-25 Rogers Distinguished Fellow in Nineteenth-Century American History at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.

More information about MSU's Doig Center can be found at montana.edu/doig. A full schedule of upcoming events can also be found on the center's website.