On his final HPPR visit as the head of WT's Center for the Study of the American West (CSAW), Dr. Alex Hunt wanted to make sure all of our listeners in the Texas Panhandle were aware of the upcoming Nall Lecture, as the topic is of great interest to those in our region. Hear our full interveiw on the link at the top of this page, and read below for the details about the lecture this Thursday night.
Thanks to Dr. Hunt for his years of dedication and service to this fabulous initiative that celebrates the history, legacy, and continued exploration of Western Studies here on the High Plains. You have enriched our landscape through the lectures, presentations, community discussions, events, and publications through CSAW, and we're excited to welcome Dr. Tim Bowman into the fold as he carries this work forward. THANK YOU BOTH!
From Chip Chandler (WTAMU): CANYON, Texas — The author whose work inspired both John Steinbeck and Kristin Hannah will be explored at an upcoming event from West Texas A&M University’s Center for the Study of the American West.
Dr. Iris Jamahl Dunkle will present “Shifting Focus: Sanora Babb and Reimagining the Dust Bowl” at 7 p.m. April 9 in Legacy Hall in the Jack B. Kelley Student Center in a presentation for CSAW’s Garry L. Nall endowed lecture series.
Admission is free.
During her eventful life, Sanora Babb took invaluable field notes and oral histories of migrant farmworkers during the Dust Bowl. That work was shared with Steinbeck, who made prodigious use of it for his 1939 masterwork “The Grapes of Wrath”; its runaway success forestalled Babb’s work on her own Dust Bowl novel, “Whose Names Are Unknown,” which eventually was published in 2004.
“She left New York with her book contract canceled,” Dunkle told Colorado Public Radio in 2025. “She couldn't write. She was devastated. She had spent a decade working on this book, and it was just thrown away.”
Her Dust Bowl scholarship—which eventually was featured in Ken Burns’ documentary and helped inspire Hannah’s “The Four Winds”—was only part of a long, fascinating life, as recounted in Dunkle’s “Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb,” published in 2024.
“Dunkle’s work reminds us of a truth that CSAW is dedicated to: there is always more to the story, and we are richer and better off knowing more,” said Dr. Alex Hunt, CSAW director, Regents Professor of English and Vincent-Haley Professor of Western Studies in the Department of English, Philosophy and Modern Languages in WT’s Sybil B. Harrington College of Fine Arts and Humanities. “Dunkle’s work on Sanora Babb will teach us a great deal about the Dust Bowl and the experience of common people who were ruined in those years. But even more, it will teach us about how the main story of the Dust Bowl, notably that so powerfully established in John Steinbeck’s ‘The Grapes of Wrath,’ hides a lot of truth. Sanora Babb is a name we should know, and Dunkle is the champion for this important Dust Bowl author.”
Dunkle, a poet as well as a nonfiction author, also wrote the biography “Charmain Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer” in 2020 and has several collections of poetry in print. An award-winning author, she specializes in delving into the often-overlooked lives of women in the American West.
