CANYON, Texas — The director of the Center for the Study of the American West at West Texas A&M University is about to go as far west as possible in the United States.

Dr. Alex Hunt, CSAW director and WT’s Vincent/Haley Professor of Western Studies, will give a special guest lecture at 7 p.m. Feb. 23 in Murie Auditorium at the University of Alaska–Fairbanks.

Hunt’s discussion, “Where the Far North Meets the Southwest,” will focus on three topics: Western American studies, climate work, and the fiction of Leslie Marmon Silko, a writer of Laguna Pueblo, Mexican and white descent who has published several novels and books of poetry and was the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” fellowship.

“I want to build bridges between WT, CSAW and UAF on the basis of interdisciplinary, regional scholarship, so I chose to speak about Silko, a Southwestern author who has unexpected Alaskan connections,” Hunt said. “The talk focuses on several aspects of what it means to be ‘western,’ including the importance of Native American culture and a strong sense of environmental awareness. I’m also interested in climate change issues in her work which similarly connect Texas and Alaska. My hope is that I can create a basis for further exchange of ideas, professors, and students between our campuses.

Silko lived in Ketchikan, Alaska, in the 1970s. She also visited Bethel, Alaska, on a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, later setting her short story “Storyteller” in the town.

Hunt was born in Fairbanks and lived there until age 7, then spent summers there and graduated from Anchorage. He worked for a time as a fishing guide on the Gulkana River. His ties to UAF are deep, and a scholarship is named in honor of his father, William R. Hunt, a professor of history from 1967 to 1979 at UAF.

Hunt will attend the annual Festival of Native Arts and will speak to UAF officials who are opening a new Indigenous Studies Center.

He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Colorado State University and his Ph.D. from the University of Oregon. He was named a Regents Professor of History by the Texas A&M University System in 2020.

Hunt has published books on novelist Annie Proulx, postcolonial ecocriticism, and 19th century British investment in the American West. He has published articles on Texas Panhandle history, works of Western and Southwestern literature, Native American and Chicano/a studies, and popular culture–most recently on the television series “Breaking Bad.”

Addressing regional challenges is a key tenet of the University’s long-range plan, WT 125: From the Panhandle to the World.

That plan is fueled by the historic, $125 million One West comprehensive fundraising campaign. To date, the five-year campaign — which publicly launched in September 2021 — has raised more than $120 million.