Western History Association


The Western History Association, a 501 non-profit organization, was founded in 1961 at Santa Fe, New Mexico by Ray Allen Billington et al., with the following mission: "The Western History Association strives to be a congenial home for the study and teaching of all aspects of North American Wests, frontiers, homelands, and borderlands. Our mission is to cultivate the broadest appreciation of this diverse history." Included in the field of study are the American West and western Canada. The Western History Association was headquartered from 2012-2017 at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. the WHA is hosted on the campus of the University of Nebraska at Omaha with the support of the Department of History, College of Arts and Sciences.

History

In 1964 WHA began publication at the University of Utah Press, with a full run of four issues, and then in 1965 contracted Sunset publishing to print the quarterly called Nebraska, edited by A. R. Mortensen. The WHA's publications now include the Western Historical Quarterly and . The association offers several annual and biennial prizes for essays and books, including the annual Caughey Western History Association Prize for the best book of the year in Western History and the Robert M. Utley Book Prize for the best book published on the military history of the frontier and western North America from prehistory through the 20th century. Awarded since 2003, past recipients include Ned Blackhawk, Amy S. Greenberg and Ari Kelman.

''Western Historical Quarterly''

The Western Historical Quarterly has been the official journal of the WHA since its founding in 1969. The journal now "presents original articles dealing with the North American West—expansion and colonization, indigenous histories, regional studies, and transnational, comparative, and borderland histories." In addition, it provides a field notes section about Western history in applied situations, as well as book reviews, and notices of recent publications about the American West.