Gordon Morris Bakken is professor of history at California State University, Fullerton. He has taught American legal and constitutional history, westward movement, California history, American military heritage, women's history, historical thinking, and historical writing as well as real estate, land use, and environmental law. He is author, most recently, of The Mining Law of 1872 (2008) and Icons of the American West (2008); coeditor of the Encyclopedia of Women in the American West (2003) and the Encyclopedia of Immigration and Migration in the American West (2006); and coauthor of World History: A Concise Thematic Analysis (2007) and, with Brenda Farrington, Women Who Kill Men: California Courts, Gender, and the Press (2009). He has served as president of Phi Alpha Theta and was founding vice president and director of the California Supreme Court Historical Society.

Lecture topics:

• Legal History of the American West
• The Mining Law of 1872
• Crime in the West
• Women who Kill Men
• Death Penalty

Viewed Friday, November 20, 2009