CWU Presentation To Focus On Historic American West

April 1, 2004

Contact: Karen J. Blair (509-963-1656/ fax 509-963-1654/e-mail: blairk@cwu.edu)

ELLENSBURG, Wash.-- "1930s Photographs of the American West by Marion Post Wolcott," will be the topic of a presentation at Central Washington University Monday, April 5. Dr. Mary Murphy, a Montana State University historian, will lead the 3 p.m. women's studies colloquium in the Samuelson Union Building Yakama Room.

Murphy, a respected scholar on western women's history, will discuss the life of Marion Post Wolcott, who traveled across the U.S. taking photographs for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) in the 1930s and '40s.

She documented conditions of the Great Depression and New Deal programs and was considered to be the best landscape photographer working for the FSA. Her talent is evident in her photographs of the American West.

Wolcott was also one of just a few women hired for the project, and her gender made for complications not faced by her male colleagues.

Murphy recently published a book on the subject, titled "Hope in Hard Times: New Deal Photographs of Montana," which is available at the CWU University Store. Murphy also penned "Mining Culture: Men, Women and Leisure in Butte, 1914-1941."

Her CWU presentation is sponsored by the university empowerment center, history department and student history club. For more information, or for persons of disability to arrange for reasonable accommodation, call (509) 963-1656, or (for the hearing impaired) TDD (509) 963-2143.