BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//wp-events-plugin.com//7.4.3//EN TZID:America/Los_Angeles X-WR-TIMEZONE:America/Los_Angeles BEGIN:VEVENT UID:491@1718.ucla.edu DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20250225T120000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20250225T130000 DTSTAMP:20241220T171424Z URL:https://1718.ucla.edu/events/ungovernable-passions/ SUMMARY:'Wild and Ungovernable Passions': Emotional Scripts and the Fate of U.S. Expansion in the Vigilante Rocky Mountain West\, 1864–1866 DESCRIPTION:\nLecture by Abby Gibson\, Ph.D. Candidate in History\, Univers ity of Southern California. Recipient of the 2024–25 Kenneth Karmiole En dowed Graduate Research Fellowship\n\nDuring the first two months of 1864\ , Montana Territory was in the throes of a violent spate of "vigilante jus tice" that resulted in the hangings of twenty-two men\, including the Sher iff of Bannack City\, Idaho Territory\, and what historians largely agree was a brutal lynching of a mistakenly identified Mexican man\, Joe Pizanth ia. Hangings happened in quick succession as the self-appointed Vigilance Committees rode across Montana and Idaho Territories and snatched up accus ed "desperadoes" and "road agents\," sometimes setting up ad hoc gallows m ultiple times a day. The Montana Vigilantes\, as they have become known wi thin the popular nostalgia of the Wild West\, were almost immediately and are still often hailed as heroes of the frontier in their brave efforts to fill in for the American justice system in the wild days before statehood . In 1866\, English schoolteacher and recent arrival to Montana Territory\ , Thomas J. Dimsdale\, published a passionate defense of the events of Jan uary and February 1864–The Montana Vigilantes!–which is held in the Wi lliam Andrews Clark Memorial Library's vast collection of Montana memorabi lia. Dimsdale's book is among the most cited firsthand accounts of the Mon tana Vigilantes\, but in this presentation Gibson will take a different an gle on his work by bringing to the fore his extensive commentary on the di sorderly emotional climate of Montana Territory that made the extremism of the vigilante violence possible. With this affective lens trained on Dim sdale's account\, Gibson will discuss not only an implicit ambivalence in his descriptions of the Vigilantes\, but consider the larger story of emot ional containment and U.S. expansion in the Rocky Mountain West contained within this work.\n\nAbby Gibson is a Ph.D. candidate in the Van Hunnick H istory Department at the University of Southern California and an Editoria l Assistant for The Huntington Library Quarterly. Before arriving at USC\ , she received her Master's degree in the history of the American West at the University of Oklahoma\, where she worked as one of two Editorial Fell ows for The Western Historical Quarterly during her two years at OU. Ab by's dissertation\, "Fearful Land: Managing Terror in the American West\, 1820–1920" lies at the intersection of the history of U.S. westward exp ansion and the history of emotions. This project reexamines the protracted struggle for the West over the course of the 19th century through the len s of fear\, tracing the terrors this region posed to an expanding settler nation. Her novel analytic focus on the emotional underpinnings of the Ame rican settler project introduces a different set of criteria by which to c haracterize this process and its instruments. Abby's dissertation ultimate ly suggests that we measure the culmination of this process in terms of fe eling when the West as a colonized region emerged as both a materially and emotionally managed landscape fully incorporated within the territorial a nd affective boundaries of the United States.\n\n\n\nThe lecture will take place via Zoom. To register to attend\, please fill out the form here.\n\ n\n\nImage: Title Page from Dimsdale\, Thos. J. (Thomas Josiah). 1866. The Vigilantes of Montana\, or\, Popular Justice in the Rocky Mountains : B eing a Correct and Impartial Narrative of the Chase\, Trial\, Capture\, an d Execution of Henry Plummer’s Road Agent Band\, Together with Accounts of the Lives and Crimes of Many of the Robbers and Desperados\, the Whole Being Interspersed with Sketches of Life in the Mining Camps of the “Far West”... / by Prof. Thos J. Dimsdale. Virginia City\, M.T: D.W. Tilton &\; Co. Clark Library Reference\; F731 .D58.\n\n \;\n\n \;\n\n& nbsp\;\n\n \;\n\n \;\n\n \; CATEGORIES:Lectures END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Los_Angeles X-LIC-LOCATION:America/Los_Angeles BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20241103T010000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 TZNAME:PST END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR