Moving Around to Settle In: Women of the Plains and Range A Home Lands lecture

Virginia Scharff, co-curator of Home Lands: How Women Made the West and director of the University of New Mexico’s Center for the Southwest, speaks on “Moving Around to Settle In: Women of the Plains and Range.” at 2 pm on Sunday, July 17, in the History Museum Auditorium. The lecture is part of the exhibition, Home Lands: How Women Made the West. The event is free with admission. Sundays free to NM residents and children 16 and under.

Download high-resolution photos from the Home Lands exhibit and of Scharff by clicking on "Go to related images" at the bottom of this page.

Scharff is the Women of the West Chair at the Autry and Professor of History and Director of the Center for the Southwest at the University of New Mexico. Scharff received her B.A. in American Studies from Yale University (1974); M.J. in Journalism from UC Berkeley (1977); M.A. in History from University of Wyoming (1981); and her Ph.D. in History from University of Arizona (1987).

Her scholarly works include Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age (1991); Twenty Thousand Roads: Women, Movement, and the West (2003), Present Tense: The United States Since 1945 (1996); Coming of Age: America in the Twentieth Century (1998); and the edited volume, Seeing Nature Through Gender (2003). She is the Beinecke Senior Research Fellow in the Lamar Center for Frontiers and Borders at Yale University (2008-9) and a Fellow of the Society of American Historians. Scharff’s newest book is The Women Jefferson Loved (HarperCollins, 2010).

She is also the author of four mystery suspense novels, written under the name of Virginia Swift:  Brown-Eyed Girl (2000), Bad Company (2002), Bye, Bye, Love (2004), and Hello, Stranger (2006). 

Home Lands: How Women Made the West, June 19-Sept. 11, is the centerpiece of the History Museum's exploration of women this summer. Originally organized by the Autry National Center in Los Angeles, it features additional materials from the History Museum’s collections. The largest of the summer’s four exhibits, it sweeps across the centuries in three regions: the Rio Arriba of northern New Mexico; Colorado’s Front Rage; and the Puget Sound.

Other summer exhibitions at the History Museum celebrating the unsung heroes of the West:

Ranch Women of New Mexico, April 15-Oct. 30 in the Mezzanine Gallery, highlights 11 women in this excerpt from an exhibit originally prepared by photographer Ann Bromberg and writer Sharon Niederman.

New Mexico’s African American Legacy: Visible, Vital and Valuable, May 15-Oct. 9 in the second-floor Gathering Space, tells the stories of the families who planted their roots and created a home in the Land of Enchantment following the Civil War.

Heart of the Home, May 27-Nov. 20 in La Ventana Gallery, spotlights historic kitchen items from the History Museum’s collections.

The full schedule of lectures and workshops supporting these exhibitions; all are free and in the History Museum auditorium unless other noted:

Sunday, June 12, 2-4 pm: Symposium on “The Journey of the African American North,” including stories from Santa Fe and Española.

Sunday, June 26, 2 pm: “Captive Women in the Slave System of the Southwest Borderland.” Lecture by James F. Brooks, president of the School for Advanced Research and prize-winning author of Captives & Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands.

Sunday, July 10, 2 pm: “Fabiola Cabeza de Baca and The Good Life.” Lecture by Tey Diana Rebolledo, regents professor at the University of New Mexico.

Sunday, July 17, 2 pm: “Moving Around to Settle In: Women of the Plains and Range.” Lecture by Virginia Scharff, co-curator of Home Lands and director of UNM’s Center for the Southwest.

Monday, July 25, 9 am to 4:30 pm, and Tuesday, July 26, 9 am to 12 pm: "Planting Seeds:  Home, Healing and Horticulture." Conference in collaboration with the New Mexico Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. $25.

Sunday, Aug. 7, 2-4 pm: “Homespun: Northern New Mexico Spinning and Weaving Techniques.” Members of the Española Valley Fiber Arts Center demonstrate Pueblo, Navajo and Spanish techniques in the Palace Courtyard.

Friday, Aug. 12, 6 pm: “Through Her Eyes: An American Indian Woman’s Perspective.” Lecture by Eunice Petramala, park ranger at the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site.

Sunday, Sept. 25, 2-4 pm: Symposium on “Entrepreneurship in the African American Community,” from barbers to caterers, mechanics to artists.

Home Lands is generously supported by Cam and Peter Starret, Ernst & Young, Eastman Kodak Company, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Unified Grocers, Wells Fargo, KCET and the Friends of the Autry. Local support is provided by Stanley S. and Karen Hubbard, the Museum of New Mexico Foundation, the Palace Guard and the Montezuma Ball.