Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People

Augustana University and the South Dakota Humanities Council present Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Fenn.

In 2014, Fenn published Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People, which won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in History. Her illustrated slide-lecture derives from her Prize-winning book, which tells the story of North Dakota’s Mandan Indians. Widely known for hosting Lewis and Clark during the winter of 1804-1805, the Mandans proved resilient and adaptable in the face of challenges that included epidemics of smallpox and whooping cough and invasions of Norway rats.

Professor Elizabeth Fenn is the Walter and Lucienne Driskill chair in Western American History at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Her field of study is the early American West, focusing on epidemic disease, Native American, and environmental history.

The program is funded in part by the South Dakota Humanities Council, Augustana University and Augustana University's Archeology Laboratory.