Patricia Nelson Limerick (born May 17, 1951) is an American historian, author, lecturer and teacher, considered to be one of the leading historians of the American West.[1]
Limerick taught at Yale University as a graduate teaching assistant, where she helped teach the highly regarded "daily themes" class. She was then an assistant professor of history at Harvard University from 1980 to 1984, when she joined the University of Colorado at Boulder. Limerick became a tenured Associate Professor of History in 1987 and a Full Professor in 1991.[2] She was also chair of the Board of the Center of the American West.
Limerick is known for her 1987 book The Legacy of Conquest, which is part of a body of historical writing sometimes known as the New Western History. Her essay on the Modoc War, titled "Haunted America" appears in the collection Ways of Reading, a textbook widely used by undergraduate English students. She also co-edited a collection of essays, titled Trails: Toward a New Western History which relate to her 1989 "Trails Through Time" exhibit.
In January 2016, she was appointed to be the Colorado State Historian and served until August 2018. Also in January 2016, she was appointed to the National Council on the Humanities, the advisory board to the National Endowment for the Humanities. Limerick was nominated by President Obama in spring 2015 and was confirmed by the United States Senate in November 2015.
In late September 2022, Glen Krutz, the new dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at CU Boulder, fired Limerick from her position as head of the Center of the American West.[5] The executive committee of the Center of the American West board resigned in protest.[6]
— (2000). Something in the Soil: Legacies and Reckonings in the New West. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN978-0393037883.
Limerick, Patricia Nelson; with Hanson, Jason L. (2012). A Ditch in Time: The City, the West, and Water. Golden, Colo.: Fulcrum Pub. ISBN978-1-55591-366-3.
Lauck, Jon K. (Fall 2011) "How South Dakota Sparked the New Western History Wars: A Commentary on Patricia Nelson Limerick," South Dakota History 41. 353–81.