AHC Teaching and Research Grants 2001-2002 Award Winners


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American Heritage Center
University of Wyoming
Mailing Address:
Dept. 3924
1000 E. University Avenue
Laramie, WY 82071
307.766.4114
ahc@uwyo.edu

Teaching and Research Grants 2001-2002 Award Winners

Ryan J. Bench
Student
Art Department
Award $1,500
Project title: Paul & Helen Henderson Oregon Trail Collection Study

Using the Paul and Helen Henderson Oregon Trail collection, Bench will research travel on the Mormon Trail through central Wyoming-specifically focusing on trail routes near Casper and Rawlins. He will produce seven paintings that describe and narrate the tremendous landscape and view that these pioneers experienced while traveling through Wyoming based on the descriptive writings (diaries and manuscripts) in the Henderson collection. The pieces will capture the pioneer's emotions and relate to seven specific sites. Exhibition will begin in the fall of 2002 at venues in Casper and Laramie.

Justin White
Student
Art Department
Award $1,500
Project title: Disappearing Era

Using the Jean London collection, White will create a series of "portraits" of London, a silent film actress who worked in comedy with people like Charlie Chaplin and Laurel & Hardy. London's collection contains many of her personal writings and correspondence as well as photographs. Each portrait will portray her in progressive stages of life, and reference journals and letters as "memories." White looks forward to working beyond his own personal life experiences in researching another individual's life and interpreting his findings through a thematically linked series of paintings. He plans to have an exhibition of these paintings on the UW campus in the fall 2002.

Adrian A. Bantjes
Associate Professor of History
Award $1,000 Project title: Fly-Fishing: History, Culture, Society This new course will use the extensive collections of rare British and American books on fly-fishing from the Toppan Library and the archival collections of the AHC relevant to the history of fly-fishing in Wyoming and the West. This project will develop, within the context of a one-semester UW class, a database of images on the history of fly-fishing covering historical, social, and cultural aspects of the sport, from its origins in Europe to its flourishing in the Western United States. It will offer students the theoretical and documentary tools with which to write a history of fly-fishing in the West and Wyoming that may be published in specialized journals or even as a collection of articles.

Michael C. Brose
Assistant Professor of History
Award $2,250 Project title: Asia Through American Eyes

Archival collections pertaining to China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam will be used for this one-semester upper-division or graduate level course. Meeting weekly at the AHC, the students will spend the semester working through one of a pre-screened list of collections producing a research paper assessing the view of Asia held by their subject writer. There are approximately 96 individual collections in this area allowing this course to be repeated numerous times before all holdings have been thoroughly investigated.

Conflicting Interests in China by Molly Schweigert (PowerPoint, 12 mb)
Marking American Anxiety by Jenna Masters (PowerPoint, 197 k)
Ray Josephs by Kristin Edwards (PowerPoint, 2 mb)
Snapshots of History by Jacob Murcray (PowerPoint, 6 mb)
Not so Ugly American by Dirk Dijkstal (PowerPoint, 17 mb)

Alyson Hagy
Assistant Professor of English
Award $500
Project title: The Writer's Attic: Writing and Researching Authentic Fiction

The Advanced Writer's Workshop (ENGL 4050) students will survey AHC manuscript collections to enhance their original fiction writing skills. Students will be required to compose a monologue in the voice of an historical character-either real (F. E. Warren or Nellie Tayloe Ross) or a fictional character who is witness to an identifiable historic event (a WWII soldier or an inmate at the Heart Mountain Relocation camp). Researching AHC archival collections will provide the details necessary to develop a richly textured, well-researched fiction that is not autobiographical in nature. The class is scheduled for fall 2002, with a public reading in December 2002.

Michael E. Harkin
Associate Professor of Anthropology
Award $2,250
Project title: Teaching Archival Research Methods for Ethnohistory

This graduate course in ethnohistory methodology will be restructured for the spring 2002 session to integrate archival research at the AHC. Collections including the Dimitri Shimkin collection which provides rich ethnographic data from the Wind River reservation in the 1930s and the Joseph O'Mahoney collection relating to New Deal-era Indian affairs will be used to develop students' research skills making them more marketable upon graduation. The use of AHC collections also enhance the quality of the expanding ethnohistory graduate program, the professional success of their graduates, and the ability of the ethnohistory research program to attract external funding.

Mary Lou Larson
Associate Professor of Anthropology

Pamela Innes
Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Award $1,000
Project title: Shoshone Women's Beliefs about Mountain Resource Use

The Dimitri Shimkin collection will be explored during the spring 2002 semester for information regarding Shoshone women's use of mountain resources. Dr. Shimkin's collection includes numerous fieldwork notebooks that contain information on many topics and specifically information from female Shoshone informants about women's movements in the Wind River Range, resource use, and belief about the mountains from the early reservation period to the mid 1930s. Drs. Innes and Larson will interview female Shoshone elders from April to August 2002 regarding women's use of mountain resources. A written report will be presented to the AHC in December 2002 and a paper on Shoshone women's mountain resource use will be produced.