[pulitzer prize]
2016 GAMECHANGER IDEAS FESTIVAL KEYNOTE SPEAKER
2015 Pulitzer Prize winner in History for Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People, an engrossing, original narrative illuminating the spectacular history of North Dakota’s Mandan Indians. ELIZABETH A. FENN is the Walter and Lucienne Driskill Professor of Western American History at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is a distinguished scholar whose studies focus on the early American West, focusing on epidemic disease, Native American, and environmental history. Her aim is to develop a continent-wide analysis that incorporates Native Americans as well as African, British, Spanish, French, Dutch, and Russian colonizers into a narrative that reflects the demographic and geographic realities of the early contact era. Her 2001 book, Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82, unearthed the devastating effects of a smallpox epidemic that coursed across the North American continent during the years of the American Revolution. After the September 11 attacks, she participated in several broadcast interviews about biological warfare. Pox Americana was awarded three prizes, including the 2002 James J. Broussard First Book Prize (Society for Historians of the Early Republic), the 2003 Longman-History Today Book of the Year award, and the 2004 Society of the Cincinnati Book Prize. In 2014, Fenn published Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People, which analyzes Mandan Indian history from 1100 to 1845. Widely known for hosting Lewis and Clark during the winter of 1804–05, the Mandans surmounted daunting challenges over many centuries. Among them were epidemics of smallpox, outbreaks of whooping cough, and invasions of Norway rats. The vibrant presence of Mandans today is a testament to their adaptability and resilience in the face of such challenges. enn is now at work on an expansive biography of Sakagawea, using her life story to illuminate the wider F history of the northern plains and Rockies.
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