Athearn Lecture Series
THE 34th ATHEARN LECTURE / April 14, 2025
The Department of History at The University of Colorado Boulder, in partnership with the Center for Humanities and the Arts, the Center of the American West, the Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies, and the American Indian Law Program present the 34th Athearn Lecture in the History of the American West. This year’s lecture will be by Dr. Maggie Blackhawk, Professor of Law at New York University, editor of Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law (2024 Edition)
Monday, April 14, 2025 / 5:00 PM / Wolf Law Building 101, (Wittemyer Courtroom)
RECEPTION TO FOLLOW / Wolf Law 100, (Boettcher Reception Hall, next door).
2450 Kittredge Loop Drive, Boulder, Colorado
"The Constitution of American Colonialism"
Dr. Maggie Blackhawk
New York University
The 34th Athearn Lecture Series welcomes to the CU Boulder campus Dr. Maggie Blackhawk, Professor of Law - New York University, on April 14, 2025. The lecture titled, "The Constitution of American Colonialism" is free and open to the public and will be followed by a reception.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Maggie Blackhawk (Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe) is professor of law at NYU and a prize-winning scholar and teacher of federal Indian law, constitutional law, and legislation. Blackhawk was awarded the American Society for Legal History’s William Nelson Cromwell Article Prize and her research has been published or is forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Supreme Court Review, American Historical Review, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Journal of the Early Republic, and Journal of Politics. Much of her scholarship explores the relationship between law and power, with a particular emphasis on the ways that subordinated peoples leverage law to shift power to their communities—especially outside of rights and courts-based frameworks. Her recent projects have focused on the laws and legal histories of American colonialism and the central role of the American colonial project, including the resistance and advocacy of Native and other colonized peoples, in shaping the constitutional law and history of the United States. (Read more from NYU)
Email: (Honor.Sachs@colorado.edu) for information on this free public event
ABOUT ROBERT ATHEARN
The late Dr. Robert G. Athearn (1914–1983) was a professor of Western History at the University of Colorado at Boulder from 1947 until his retirement in 1982. An extraordinarily productive scholar, his publications included Westward the Briton (1953), Union Pacific Country (1971) The Coloradans (1976), The Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad: Rebel of the Rockies (1977), The Mythic West in Twentieth Century America (1986), and William Tecumseh Sherman and the Settlement of the West (reprint 1995).
Professor Athearn was one of the founders, as well as past president, of the Western History Association. Additionally, during his career held numerous positions on historical committees, academic societies, and editorial boards. His impact as a teacher was equally great. He instructed thousands of undergraduate students over the years, and trained a score of contemporary Western historians in the profession he loved. As part of his legacy, Professor Athearn endowed a lectureship in the History Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder to be held on topics in Western history. We continue to host the Athearn Lecture Series, and encourage you to join us at the next Athearn Lecture.