AHC Teaching and Research Grants 2003 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 2003 Award Winners

Dr. Carol Bryant
UW Secondary Social Studies Education
Project Title: Using Primary Documents to Develop Teaching Units

The goals of the project are to have pre-service teachers use the primary resources of the American Heritage Center in the areas of the American West, the world wars, and modern culture to develop instructional units which will be used in their future classrooms. The National Council for Social Studies strongly supports the use of primary sources in the classroom and such use is also referenced in the Wyoming Social Studies Standards. Also, the students will present their research in a public event at the AHC. The project will take place during the Fall 2004 semester.

Dr. Michael Harkin
UW Anthropology Department
Project Title: Teaching Archival Research Methods for Ethnohistory

The purpose of the grant is to hire a teaching assistant for the class Field Methods in Cultural Anthropology ANTH 5650, Spring 2003). The course is taught in two parts. The first requires students to learn and practice archival research. An advance graduate student with archival research experience will be hired as a teaching assistant to aid in the integration of archival research in primary sources at the American Heritage Center into the course structure. The second part of the class centers on field experience in the collection of oral history interviews. Interviews with Crow elders will be conducted. The teaching assistant will also assist with the interview portion of the course.

Dr. Amanda Rees
UW Geography and Recreation
Project Title: "Be Our Guest": Dude Ranching in Wyoming

The grant will be used for the course titled "Tourism and Recreation" (G&R 4420, Spring 2003). The class is designed to utilize archival collections at the American Heritage Center relating to dude ranching in Wyoming. Students will be required to write a proposal for research funding to complete the work of the class, uncover the history and experiences of Wyoming dude ranching, and develop materials for a website articulating that history and those experiences.

Michael Lange
Music Performance Major
Project Title: Jazz from the Archives Michael will research collections of the American Heritage Center containing unpublished music by many jazz musicians. Three of the collections are Buck Clayton, Harry James, and Bob Russell (Duke Ellington's lyricist). Michael will transcribe, write out instrumental parts, and arrange the pieces. During the fall semester Michael will lead a jazz combo and perform the music at the AHC in a concert titled "Jazz from the Archives." The concert would be recorded and copies of the recording and the music would be held by the AHC.

Evelina Vardanyan
Graduate student in the UW Department of Music
Project Title: American Vaudeville and Beatrice Kay

Evelina will research the papers of performer Beatrice Kay, held by the American Heritage Center, in order to study Kay's role in the history of American Vaudeville. Not only does vaudeville tell us much about America's popular culture during the early twentieth century, but it also informs us about the country's tastes, values, and habits of that era. Kay had a long and fruitful career in the entertainment industry in vaudeville and as an actress and singer. Evelina's goal is to use the research about Kay to write a paper to be presented at the Collegiate Music Society, American Musicological Society, or similar conference.

Andrew Grace
Graduate student in the UW American Studies Program
Project Title: Documentary film project about the Little Bighorn National Monument

During 1991 President George Bush signed into law a bill which renamed the Custer Battlefield National Monument as the Little Bighorn National Monument. The bill also called for "the design, construction, and maintenance of a memorial and monument to recognize the Indians who fought, on either side, to preserve their land and culture in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, June 25-26, 1876." The memorial will be unveiled this summer. Andrew will research the collections of the American Heritage Center dealing with the famous battle, including the books in the Toppan Rare Book Library. He will then travel to Montana for the unveiling of the memorial and the annual celebrations in nearby Hardin, Montana, in order to produce a documentary, which will be an effort to investigate the way we remember the past and to better understand the power of stories in shaping our history and identities.