with stephen aron
doors open 6 p.m. | Talk 6:30-8 p.m.
Drawing on his recent book Peace and Friendship: An Alternative History of the American West, Stephen Aron will illuminate episodes in the history of American westward expansion in which erstwhile enemies overcame their differences—at least for a while. His talk will explore how in various places and times peace unexpectedly broke out and foes became friends, why these relations fell apart, what we remember about these episodes, and the lessons museums like the Autry in Los Angeles and the Jackson Hole History Museum might take from them as we ponder the West that was and wasn’t—and the West that might be.
The one-hour talk will be follow by a Q&A with Stephen Aron and Elliott West.
About Stephen Aron
Stephen Aron is the Calvin and Marilyn Gross Director and President and CEO of the Autry Museum of the American West and Professor of History, Emeritus at the University of California Los Angeles.
He is the author of How the West Was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky from Daniel Boone to Henry Clay (1996); American Confluence: The Missouri Frontier from Borderland to Border State (2006); The American West: A Very Short Introduction (2015); and Peace and Friendship: An Alternative History of the American West (2022); the co-author of Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A History of the World from the Beginnings of Humankind to the Present (5th edition, 2017); the co-editor of Trading Cultures: The Worlds of Western Merchants (2001); and the editor of Convergence magazine (2004-2011).
Aron holds degrees from Amherst College (BA 1982) and the University of California, Berkeley (MA 1986; PhD 1990). After completing his doctorate, he joined the faculty at Princeton University, before moving to UCLA in 1996. From 2002-2014, Aron split his appointment between UCLA and the Autry Museum of the American West. At the Autry, he served as the founding executive director and then chair of the Institute for the Study of the American West. In that position, as well as in his role as a consultant for other museums and for numerous television programs, documentaries, and films, he has sought to bridge the divide between “academic” and “public” history.
In addition to Princeton, UCLA, and the Autry, Aron has held appointments at the Université de Paris 1 – Sorbonne, and St. John’s University (where he was the Peter and Margaret D’Angelo Chair in the Humanities in 2015). In 2011, Aron was elected to the American Antiquarian Society and in 2015 to the Society of American Historians. In 2017, he served as President of the Western History Association.