Daniel Herman

Professional Overview

I specialize in the U.S. West, Native American history, nineteenth-century U.S., and U.S. political and social history.

My current book project is Legacy of Reform: The Inner West and American Politics, 1890-1988 (under contract with Harvard University Press). Legacy offers a new interpretation of the political history of the Plains and Rockies states, whose Congressional delegations repeatedly backed major twentieth-century reforms, including 1890s-1920 woman suffrage, 1898-1930s anti-imperialism, 1930s-60s “home rule” for Native Americans, and 1950s-70s civil rights. Contrary to what New Western Historians often argue, the Inner West states’ increasing conservatism in the 1970s-80s was not simply an outgrowth of the “legacy of conquest,” backlash against civil rights, or longstanding, “cowboy” antipathy to government. Rather it proceeded from rapid suburbanization and defense spending together with declines in the timber, mining, railroad, and agricultural sectors. Fast-changing economies and constituencies pushed old-style reformers aside and ushered new-style reformers onto the stage. Seeking to appeal to prosperous, suburban voters, the new reformers abandoned the folksy “cowboy” and “maternalist” styles of their predecessors—styles that bespoke duty to family, neighbor, and country—and instead focused on education, prosperity, and individual success. Just as important, the new reformers advocated a new mix of reforms, including high-tech, free trade, wilderness preservation, and reproductive choice, thus merging discourses of economic liberation with discourses of personal liberation. Amid those tectonic political shifts, New Western History came to the fore. Despite offering vital, much-needed insights, New Western History was itself partly a product of—and servant to—newly powerful suburban constituencies and a waning politics of class. The net result was a growing urban-rural divide, a gradual class re-alignment of the parties, and sweeping historiographical currents that produced new eddies of misunderstanding.

Curriculum Vitae

Education

• Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley, 1995

Courses Taught

• American West
• American Indian history
• American Revolution
• Civil War Era
• Jefferson, Jackson, and American Expansion
• U.S. history surveys (to 1865 and since 1865)
• Political History of the American West (future course now in the planning stage)

Selected Publications

• “Cowboy Progressives,” Aeon, April 8, 2022.
• “Searching the Shadows: Thoughts on the West’s Political History: An Extended Field Note,” Western Historical Quarterly, Summer 2022 (vol. 53, no. 2), 117–143. Nominated for the Western History Association’s Michael Malone award.
• The Feudist (Texas Christian University Press, 2020). The Feudist is a work of fiction about an 1880s Arizona range war. Told from the point of view of a teenaged runaway who finds himself embroiled in the conflict, the novel explores the experiences of warring historical actors, including “mixed-race” (part Native American) cowboys; Texas ranchers; Nuevo Mexicano (hispanic) sheepherders; Mormon settlers; and the wives and daughters of all of them. This was a collaborative project with my father (1928-2023).
• “The Twining Paths of Mormons and ‘Lamanites’: From Arizona to Latin America,” Journal of Arizona History Special Issue, Fall 2020 (vol. 60, no. 3), 395-428. Nominated for the Western History Association’s Arrington-Prucha Prize.
• “The Rim Country War Reconsidered: On Honor Rustling, Vigilantism, and How History Got Remembered,” Journal of Arizona History, Spring 2017 (vol. 58, no. 1), 11-50.
• Rim Country Exodus: A Story of Conquest, Renewal, and Race in the Making (University of Arizona Press, 2012) (winner of the Labriola Center American Indian National Book Award and the Charles Redd Center/Phi Alpha Theta Book Award in Western History).
• Hell on the Range: A Story of Honor, Conscience, and the American West (Yale University Press, 2010) (chosen as a Pima County Library Book of the Year).