October 16-17, 2024: West of the White House

This landmark symposium marks the first sustained collaboration between the Clements Center for Southwest Studies and the Center for Presidential History with support from the Dedman College Interdisciplinary Institute at SMU. Co-organized by Cecily Zander (Texas Woman’s University), Jeffrey Engel (SMU) and Andy Graybill (SMU).

What has been the relationship between the nation’s frontier and the American presidency? How, in other words, have U.S. presidents been shaped by events and crises occurring at the edge of the nation? And how, in turn, have presidents sought to extend executive power into these ever-shifting borderlands—where competing claims to sovereignty challenged the power of the American state—from the nation’s founding to the present?

Both evening events will be held in the Moody Auditorium, Moody Hall, 6404 Airline Road, SMU

Wednesday at 6 pm: The Frontier and the Presidency before 1900 - moderated by Andy Graybill. To register for Wednesday evening, click here.

Thursday at 6 pm: The Frontier and the Presidency after 1900 - moderated by Jeff Engel. To register for Thursday evening, click here.

The following participants hope to answer those questions:

Augusta Dell’Omo, SMU, “Far-Right Lawmen: The Constitutional Sheriff Movement on the Anti-Federal Frontier;” Nicholas Guyatt, Cambridge, “Jefferson’s Frontier: Nationalism and Provincialism in the Early Republic;” Mallory Huard, Hood, ““Queen Liliu‘okalani and the U.S. Presidency: Shifting Political Power in 1890s Hawai‘I;” Drew Isenberg, Kansas, “The Borderlands and the Invention of a National Political Narrative, 1818-1848;” Khalil Anthony Johnson, Wesleyan, “Schools and the Internal Frontier,” Ruth Lawlor, Cornell, “Alaska, Center of the World: The Frontier in the Far North;” Julie Reed, Penn State, “Borders, Boundaries and New Frontiers for the Cherokee Nation;” T.J. Stiles, Biographer, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Nature without Natives;” Aileen Teague, Texas A&M, “The Other Side of the Border: Exclusionary Policies and the new American Frontier from the 1970s to the Present;” and Cecily Zander, TWU, “The Dakota War of 1862: Abraham Lincoln’s Civil War Borderland.”

The essays will be combined into a volume to be published by the University of North Carolina Press.