Scholars Awarded Travel Grants for Research at UWs American Heritage Center

Scholars from across the country and beyond will travel to the University of Wyoming in the coming year to pursue their research in the vast archives of UW’s American Heritage Center (AHC).

Eleven of those individuals will do so as winners of AHC travel grants, awarded annually with funding from permanent endowments associated with UW’s world-class repository of manuscript collections, rare books and university archives. The grants range from $500-$2,500.

“This year’s list of travel grant winners is a diverse group with a broad range of interests,” AHC Director Bridget Burke says. “Our funding helps them do their work, and the American Heritage Center and UW community are enriched by a stream of visiting scholars who bring their enthusiasm and expertise to our collections and campus.

“Our travel grant researchers become AHC alumni ambassadors when they head home, forming an international community of advocates and boosters,” she adds. “We are pleased to be able to bring scholars and collections together through this program, and we are grateful for the many endowments that make this possible.”

Here is the list of 2017 grant recipients:

-- John Buchkoski, a Ph.D. student from the University of Oklahoma, will use the Harry Stewart papers, along with several other collections, to research religious environmental history in Catholic nuns relating to migrant workers in the 1970s, particularly the National Assembly of Religious Women.

-- Matthew Carr, a Ph.D. candidate from Columbia University, will use a number of collections relating to the Wyoming Democratic and Republican parties to analyze the evolution of Wyoming’s political parties specifically pertaining to the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer/questioning and other individuals.

-- Cassandra Clark, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Utah, will use the Paul Popenoe papers to study the role of the American West in the formation of scientific race theory.

-- Ilana Emmett, a Ph.D. candidate at Northwestern University, will use several script collections, including the Anne and Frank Hummert scripts, to study the aesthetic history of American daytime soap operas.

-- Kate Fortmueller, faculty member at the University of Georgia, will use the entertainment history collections to research the evolution of labor in entertainment and media industries.

-- Curtis Foxley, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Oklahoma, will use the Philip White papers, among other collections, to research the role of Wyoming in Cold War military development.

-- Dean J. Kotlowski, faculty member at Maryland’s Salisbury University, will use the papers of Sens. Milward Simpson, Alan K. Simpson and Gale McGee, along with the Zdenek Salzmann papers, for research on a book, titled “Indigenous Self-Determination across the Pacific: The United States Congress and Australian Parliament Compared, 1960-1993,” which discusses trans-Pacific policies on Native American and Aboriginal displacement.

-- Marek Kulesza, previously on the faculty of the Institute of Culture at Warsaw University, will use the Norma Drury Collection to research Polish-American performing arts relations.

-- Bryan Leech, faculty member at Augustana College, will use the Anaconda Geological Documents Collection, along with the Theresa Jordan papers and other Butte-related collections, to research the environmental, economic and social effects of mine subsidence in Butte, Mont.

-- Juan Manuel Rubio, a Ph.D. candidate from the University of California-Irvine, will use the Anaconda geological documents, the Cerro de Pasco papers and the AHC Latin American Collection to research the mining politics and expertise of engineers, prospectors and miners at the Cerro de Pasco Co.

Also, Sarah Stanford-McIntyre, recent American studies Ph.D. graduate from the College of William & Mary, has been awarded UW’s Bernard L. Majewski Fellowship in Economic Geology and will pursue research on labor perspectives on environmental and economic impacts in the West Texas oil industry.

Seeking to immerse themselves in the vast collections of the center, scholars and historians from all over the world visit the AHC every year. Many universities have primary source repositories, but few have repositories as extensive and significant as the AHC.

The AHC (www.uwyo.edu/ahc) ranks among the largest nongovernmental repositories in the United States. In 2010, the AHC was recognized as one of the nation’s premier archives when it received the Society of American Archivists’ Distinguished Service Award. The AHC currently houses 75,000 cubic feet of materials, with 15,000 cubic feet remaining to welcome new collections.

The AHC’s collections focus on Wyoming and the Rocky Mountain West, and nationally on the topics of environment and conservation, the mining and petroleum industries, air and rail transportation, the performing arts (particularly radio, television, film and popular music), journalism, U.S. military history and book history.