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UW American Heritage Center Announces 2023 Fellowship Recipients

vintage photo of a woman reading on a bed
American journalist Grace Robinson received her first foreign correspondent assignment in 1930 from the New York Daily News when she accompanied the pilgrimage of Gold Star mothers and widows to France following World War I. The pilgrimage is a topic of study for a UW American Heritage Center fellowship. (Box 35, Grace Robinson papers, Collection 6941, UW American Heritage Center)

The American Heritage Center (AHC) at the University of Wyoming has selected the 2023 recipients of its annual fellowships.

Each fellowship supports a 20-day research stay at the AHC. Academic scholars at any level, from graduate students to senior tenured faculty, are encouraged to apply.

Outstanding scholars receiving fellowships this year are Edward Landa, an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland; independent researcher Ian Strahn; and Ph.D. candidates Warren Dennis, of Boston University; Jessica Simmons, of Oklahoma State University; and Constantin Berlin, of Germany’s Goethe University.

“The research topics represented by these fellowships and grants show, once again, how the collections held by the American Heritage Center are known nationally and internationally as important primary sources for writing cultural, scientific and economic history, AHC Director Paul Flesher says. “The topics for these awards range from energy policy concerning fossil fuels and about the USA’s uranium supply to German cultural identification with the American West, to the two world wars of the 20th century and even the comic book industry.”

Here are more details on the fellowships and their recipients:

Alan K. Simpson Fellowship in Western Political History

Dennis is researching the political and cultural shift in American energy policy from the 1960s to early 1990s, and the role of conservatism in emphasizing fossil fuels that characterized this period of increased energy use. His work explores the debates and implementation of energy policies -- both locally and at the federal level -- with an eye on exploring the cultural division over consumer protection.

Peter K. Simpson Fellowship on the American West

Berlin and Strahn are creating a journalistic research collective titled “From William F. Cody to Winnetou: American Frontier Representation in the German Cultural Imagination,” which explores how the American West and its protagonists of the 19th and 20th centuries came to be seen as a mirror for German dreams and ambitions -- and an idealized escape from industrialized, and socially static Europe.

train ticket with Buffalo Bill on it
This is a train ticket used by the traveling ensemble of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show during a 1906 tour of Germany. German cultural identification with the American West is a topic of study for a UW American Heritage Center fellowship. (Box 1, Buffalo Bill Collection, Collection 264, UW American Heritage Center)

Bernard L. Majewski Research Fellowship

Landa, in the University of Maryland’s Department of Environmental Science and Technology, is studying the intersection of economic geology and the history of science and technology. Drawing upon his 40-year career at the U.S. Geological Survey, where Landa was a research project chief in the aquatic geochemistry group, his research focuses on the history of geologists and mining engineers responsible for the uranium supply chain, the history of which has remained mostly unexplored.

Women in Public Life Fellowship

Simmons, a Ph.D. candidate in history, is exploring the history of women in journalism and their reporting during World War I and the Inter-War Era. Specifically, she is interested in women who interviewed the families of Indigenous soldiers who followed Gold Star mothers in their journeys to locate the bodies of their fallen sons, and who traveled to Europe themselves as reporters, nurses or YMCA volunteers.

In addition to the four fellowships, the AHC also awarded 10 travel grants of $750 each to assist with expenses for scholars traveling from locations throughout the U.S. and internationally to research a wide variety of topics. These include the history of the American wildlife conservation movement; a sensory history of race and antebellum scientific expeditions; Jewish identity in the comic book industry; journalist John Franklin Carter’s work with the U.S. Office of Strategic Services; anti-queer politics in rural America; the history of the World Bank; U.S. involvement in Japan’s Ryukyu Islands; the impact of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo in U.S. politics; the history of labor management beginning in the 17th century; and the politics and projects of leftist American architects in the 1930s and 1940s.

The AHC awards travel grants and fellowships annually.

For more information about the AHC’s travel grant and fellowship program, go to www.uwyo.edu/ahc/grants/. For questions, call (307) 766-2557 or email Leslie Waggener, AHC Simpson archivist, at lwaggen2@uwyo.edu.

Contact Us

Institutional Communications
Bureau of Mines Building, Room 137
Laramie, WY 82071
Phone: (307) 766-2929
Email: cbaldwin@uwyo.edu


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