David Wrobel

Fellow Type
Visiting Fellow
Fellowship
Beinecke Library Visiting Postdoctoral Research Fellowship
Fellowship Year
2005-2006
Project Title/Topic
The World in the West, The West In the World: Travel Writers and the American Frontier
Affiliation/Department
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Biography

David Wrobel is Professor of History at the University of Nevada Las Vegas where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on the American West, American Intellectual History, and Modern American History. As the Frederick W. Beinecke Senior Research Fellow in Western Americana, he has spent the last year engaged in research at the Beinecke Library.He is the author of Promised Lands: Promotion, Memory and the Creation of the American West (2002) (a finalist for the Spur Award for Contemporary Western Non- Fiction), The End of American Exceptionalism: Frontier Anxiety from the Old West to the New Deal (1993), and of numerous articles and essays. He is the co-editor of Seeing and Being Seen: Tourism in the American West (2001); and Many Wests: Place, Culture, and Regional Identity (1997). His current book project, The World in the West: Travel Writing and the American Frontier, will be published in the University of New Mexicos Calvin Horn Book Series. The books of essays use western American travel writing as a vehicle for exploring the themes of globalism and exceptionalism in American thought and in non-American perceptions of the nation. His next book will be an intellectual biography of the American historian Ray Allen Billington and will emphasize theconcurrent resurgence of American exceptionalism and the frontier theme during theCold War.David is the incoming Vice President (2007) and President Elect (2008) of the American Historical Associations Pacific Coast Branch, and is currently Chair of the Western History Associations (WHA) Membership Committee. He also served recently as President of Phi Alpha Theta, the National History Honor Society (2004-2006). David is also a dedicated promoter of partnerships between the academy and the schools. He has directed and participated in a wide range of NEH and US Department of Education-funded institutes for K-12 teachers in Colorado, Nevada, and Wyoming.