A past President of the Western History Association, David J. Weber is the Robert and Nancy Dedman Professor of History at Southern Methodist University. He has written several books, including the award-winning The Mexican Frontier, 1821-1846.
Dr. Weber's most recent book, The Spanish Frontier in North America (Yale University Press, 1992), reaches further back in time to challenge the time-honored concept, widely disseminated by British and Anglo American historians over the past century and a half, that while the English and French came to the New World to settle or engage in honest trade, the Spaniards came to plunder. It also questions the simplistic idea that Spanish culture was imposed wholesale upon the unsuspecting Native Americans; in fact, through the use of recent historical theory and methodology and a careful reexamination of primary sources, Weber argues that the cultural impact worked very strongly in both directions. The Western Historical Quarterly calls The Spanish Frontier in North America a "splendid synthesis....[which] qualifies David J. Weber as the Herbert E. Boulton or John Francis Bannon of our generation."
Saturday's plenary lecture, following the luncheon, will be entitled "Spaniards and 'Savages' in the Age of Enlightenment." In addition to the lecture, Dr. Weber will conduct two less formal presentations: a Saturday-morning seminar on the writing of history, designed for graduate students and interested scholars outside of his field; and a Saturday-afternoon seminar on historiography, with an emphasis on the various conflicting reactions to The Spanish Frontier in North America and how he dealt with them.