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.
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.
