UW American Heritage Center Names 2025 Research Award Recipients

The American Heritage Center (AHC) at the University of Wyoming has selected recipients of its 2025 fellowships and spring travel grants.

This year, the center will support 15 scholars from across the United States and internationally who will use the AHC’s collections for important research in history, environmental studies, gender studies, popular culture and more.

“The varied range of projects in this year’s cohort reflects the exceptional breadth and depth of the AHC’s collections,” AHC Director Paul Flesher says. “From environmental justice in Denver to the history of bison conservation, from the evolution of American violence to the cultural significance of Barbara Stanwyck in Westerns, these scholars are addressing significant questions that illuminate our understanding of the American West and beyond. We are proud to support scholarship that connects our past to contemporary issues and conversations.”

This year’s recipients include professors, graduate students and independent scholars from institutions including the University of California, Penn State, Montana State University, the University of North Carolina and Universidad de Valparaiso in Chile.

Notable projects include:

-- Joseph Beilein Jr. (Penn State-Erie) received the Peter K. Simpson Fellowship for his work on “The Scouts’ Progress: Jayhawkers, Yankee Soldiers and Indian Fighters in the Evolution of American Violence.” This fellowship is a partnership between the AHC and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody.

-- John Carranza (Texas State University) received the Women in Public Life Fellowship for his book project “Explaining Sex: Disability, Expertise and American Sexual Citizenship, 1950s-1990s.”

-- John Flynn (University of Utah) was awarded the Alan K. Simpson Fellowship for his project “Western Solidarity: An Environmental History of Wastelanding and Resistance in the West,” examining how Cold War policies influenced land-use conflicts in the West.

-- Farrah Hersh (Coastal Carolina University) earned the Fellowship for the Study of 20th Century American Popular Culture to study representations of mature women in 1950s Westerns, with a focus on Barbara Stanwyck.

-- William Holly (West Virginia University Institute of Technology) was awarded the George A. Rentschler Fellowship for his work on “The Mountain is Part of Us: Tourism, Community and American Indian Sacred Land in Northern Arizona since 1969.”

-- James Paules (University of Arizona) received the Majewski Fellowship for his dissertation examining how Southwestern forests served as sites of Indigenous resistance, exploited resources and drivers of federal land management.

Additionally, travel grant recipients will research topics ranging from environmental justice and industrial pollution in Denver neighborhoods to the role of Hawaii as a maritime borderland between China and the U.S. empire, and from the history of U.S. child care policy to artistic representations of landscapes.

The AHC’s grants and fellowships program supports research that uses the center’s collections, one of the largest nongovernmental archives in the nation. The program aims to advance scholarship across disciplines and support both established and emerging scholars in their work.

For information about the AHC, its grants, fellowships program and collections, visit www.uwyo.edu/ahc.