A conversation with historian Jason Heppler about their book

Silicon Valley and the Environmental Inequalities of High-Tech Urbanism

(University of Oklahoma Press, Environment in Modern North America Series, 2024)

Dr. Jason A. Heppler is a historian and digital historian, currently working as Senior Developer at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media and an adjunct professor of history at George Mason University. He earned a BA in history from South Dakota State University and an MA and PhD in history from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Prior to his current positions at George Mason he held posts at Stanford University's Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis, Dept. of History, and Center for Interdisciplinary Digital Research, and the University of Nebraska at Omaha's Sustainability program, Libraries, and history department. He co-edited a 2020 University of Cincinnati Press volume with Rebecca Wingo, Digital Community Engagement: Partnering Communities with the Academy, which won the 2021 National Council on Public History Book Award. His first monograph, which we talk about today, Silicon Valley and the Environmental Inequalities of High-Tech Urbanism (University of Oklahoma Press, Volume 9 in the Environment in Modern North America Series, 2024).

The Writing Westward Podcast is produced and hosted by Prof. Brenden W. Rensink for the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University. Subscribe to the Writing Westward Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, and other podcast distribution apps and platforms. Follow the BYU Redd Center and the Writing Westward Podcast on Facebook, Bluesky, or X/Twitter, or get more information @ https://www.writingwestward.org. Theme music by Micah Dahl Anderson @ www.micahdahlanderson.com

A conversation with historian Coll Thrush about their book

Wrecked: Unsettling Histories from the Graveyard of the Pacific

(University of Washington Press, 2025)

Coll Thrush is Professor of History and associate faculty in Critical Indigenous Studies at the University of British Columbia. He earned a B.A. from Fairhaven College at Western Washington University and PhD in History from the University of Washington. His first book, Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place (University of Washington Press, Weyerhauser Environmental Book Series, 2007) won the 2007 Washington State Book Award and came out in a 2nd edition in 2017. In 2011 Thrush and Colleen E. Boyd co-edited Phantom Past, Indigenous Presence: Native Ghosts in North American Culture and History (University of Nebraska Press, 2011). His next monograph was Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire (Yale University Press, Henry Roe Cloud Series on American Indians and Modernity, 2016). Just last week, he published his new book Wrecked: Unsettling Histories from the Graveyard of the Pacific (University of Washington Press, Emil and Kathleen Sick Book Series in Western History and Biography, 2025).

The Writing Westward Podcast is produced and hosted by Prof. Brenden W. Rensink for the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University. Subscribe to the Writing Westward Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, and other podcast distribution apps and platforms. Follow the BYU Redd Center and the Writing Westward Podcast on Facebook, Bluesky, or X/Twitter, or get more information @ https://www.writingwestward.org.

Theme music by Micah Dahl Anderson @ www.micahdahlanderson.com

A conversation with scholar William Grady about their book

Redrawing the Western: A History of American Comics and the Mythic West

(University of Texas Press, 2024)

Dr. William Grady is an independent scholar and library based in the United Kingdom in Manchester. He earned a PhD in English from the University of Dundee and a masters of research and bachelors of arts in film and media studies from Manchester Metropolitan University. He held a post-doctoral research post at the University of the Arts in London, and has taught courses on comics, media theory, and film history at the University of Dundee and Manchester Metropolitan University, where he now works as a collections librarian.

The Writing Westward Podcast is produced and hosted by Prof. Brenden W. Rensink for the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University. Subscribe to the Writing Westward Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, and other podcast distribution apps and platforms.

Follow the BYU Redd Center and the Writing Westward Podcast on Facebook, Bluesky, or Twitter, or get more information @ https://www.writingwestward.org.

Theme music by Micah Dahl Anderson @ www.micahdahlanderson.com