Framing the West: Race, Gender and the Photographic Frontier in the Pacific Northwest (Oxford University Press, NY: 2003-isbn #0-19-514652-2 pbk- 53 halftones) by Carol Williams is the 2004 winner of the American Historical Association-Pacific Coast Branch, Norris and Carol Hundley Award. The prize, endowed by historian of the American west Prof. Emeritus Norris Hundley, is given "annually for the most distinguished book on any historical subject submitted by a scholar who resides within the twenty-two western states or two Canadian provinces from which the branch draws its membership. It is offered for both first and subsequent books and to young as well as mature scholars."; This year's prize was adjudicated by historians Peggy Pascoe (UOregon); Christopher Friday (Western Washington University) and James Gump (USanDiego).

Photography has long served the pursuit of history primarily as illustration, as embellishment for an unfurling historical narrative. This limited use of photography, Williams argues in Framing the West, severely confines our understanding of how photography constructed cultural and racial difference between settlers and First Nations, effectively emptying the photographic artifacts of the imperial, commercial, and anthropological motivations behind their creation. The photographic work of northwest coast photographers such as Hannah and Richard Maynard, Stephen Spencer, Benjamin Leeson, and Frederick Dally, among others, is considered as are unique indigenous uses of photography from 1862 to 1890. As Williams determines, Nuu-chah-nulth, Coast Salish, and Straits Salish people incorporated photography into daily and ceremonial life to forcefully counter prevailing stereotypes produced by commercial images of "Indian life.";

Carol Williams is currently Assistant Professor in Women's Studies Program and the department of History at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta where she specializes in American and Women's History. Over the past fourteen years she has taught at UNBC, Capilano College, Simon Fraser University, and North Island College.