Past Fellows

The Buffalo Bill Center of the West’s Resident Fellowship program promotes scholarship by providing a limited number of research stipends for promising and established visiting western scholars. These past fellows and their research topics show the breadth of research that has taken place through the program.

2017 – 2018 Fellows:

Sonja Dobroski, University of St. Andrew PhD candidate, How was the War Bonnet Perceived and Written about Historically by Non-Native People

Dr. John Langellier, Retired, formerly Director of Central Division of Arizona Historical Society, Hollywood Horse Soldiers: The U.S. Cavalry in Popular Culture

Dr. Ellen Lofaro, University of Tennessee, Curator of Archaeology Collections, Beyond Stereotypes: The Multivocal Possibilities in “Reading” the 19th–20th Century Material Culture of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation

Matthew Moss, MA with distinction, University of Chester, United Kingdom, Winchester Firearms of the First World War

2016 – 2017 Fellows:

Brent Rogers of the Joseph Smith Paper with the project Buffalo Bill and the Mormons: Understanding the Cultural, Environmental, and Economic Connections and Evolutions of Two America West Mainstays

Danielle Haque from Minnesota State University-Mankato with the project Arab Performers in the Wild West Show

Doug Sackman from the University of Puget Sound with the project American Panorama: Rediscovering the History of the American West

Majel Boxer from Fort Lewis College with Return of the Pte Oyate (Buffalo People): A Peoples’ History of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation

2015 – 2016 Fellows:

Andrés Carlstein, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Health and Human Physiology, University of Iowa, Iowa City. Project: Research for the historical novel The Red Gaucho, based on the true story of Daniel Gilmour, a kidnapped son of Scottish immigrants, an Argentine soldier, and one of the last true gauchos.

Kelli Grinich, Independent writer and poet, McMinnville, Oregon: Meditations on Barbed Wire and Western Landscapes

Matthew Hermes, PhD, Research Associate Professor, Department of Bioengineering, Clemson University, Simpsonville, South Carolina: Aerial Reflections through Time: Appreciating Jack Richard’s Inflight Photographs through the Eyes of Bob Richard and Google Earth™

Fiona McDonald, PhD, Antropologist, writer, and editor, New Knowledge Organization, Ltd., New York City, New York: Material Memories: The Transformation of Woolen Blankets Across Time and Place

Rachel Schmid, Curator of Art, William Rolland Gallery of Fine Art, California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, California: His Reputation Precedes Him: Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and the Shaping of 20th Century Western Art

Nancy Stark, President, Writer, and Producer, Mind2MindMedias, Inc., White Hall, Maryland: Heart, Strength, Speed: How Horses Ran the American West: An Interactive Online Program and Curriculum

Emily Voelker, PhD candidate and Raymond and Margaret Horowitz Foundation Dissertation Fellow, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts: Prince Roland Boaparte’s Photographic Encounters with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West in Paris at the 1889 Exposition Universelle

2014 – 2015 Fellows:

John Clayton, Freelance writer, Red Lodge, MT: Revisiting the 1988 Yellowstone Fires

Michelle Anne Delaney, Director, Consortium for Understanding the American Experience, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC: Advance Work: Art and Advertising in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West

Jennifer R. Henneman, Doctoral candidate, History, University of Washington, Seattle: Her Representation Precedes Her: Transatlantic Feminine Celebrity and American Identity, 1865 – 1895

Bryn B. Potter, Adjunct Curator of Anthropology, Riverside (CA) Metropolitan Museum: The Baskets of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West: the Plains Indian Museum Collection

Charlotte L. Quinney, PhD, Adjunct Lecturer, Gender and Women’s Studies; Media, Film and Journalism Studies, Colorado Women’s College, Denver: Embodied West: The Material Coordinates of the American West

Monica Steinberg, Doctoral candidate, Art History, The Graduate Center, City University of New York: “Billy’Al’Bengston’s ‘Public’F(r)ame”

Julia Yezbick, Doctoral candidate, Social Anthropology and Media, Harvard University; Liza Belby, Co-Director, The Hinterlands Performance Ensemble, Detroit, MI; Ben Gaydos, Assistant Professor of Design, University of Michigan-Flint; Richard Newman, Co-Director, The Hinterlands Performance Ensemble: Manifest Destiny! Docufiction and Western Myth-Making from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West to the Frontier of Contemporary Detroit

2013 – 2014 Fellows:

Bryn Potter, Adjunct Curator of Anthropology, Riverside (CA) Metropolitan Museum: Authenticity in Western American Paintings: An Examination of Native American Basketry in the Studio Collections of Three Artists

Rebecca Wingo, Doctoral candidate, History, University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Dr. Shoemaker’s Traveling Lantern Slides: Constructing Domesticity on Crow Reservation, 1910

Allison Robbins, Assistant Professor, Music, University of Central Missouri, Warrensburg: Cowboy Music of the Frontier and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Martin Woodside, Doctoral candidate, Childhood Studies, Rutgers University-Camden, NJ: Child Performers, Children of Adult Performers, and Child Spectators of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West

Nicole Perry, Post-doctoral Fellow, Institut for Germanistik, University of Vienna: German Interest in Native North American Indians

Samantha Sommers, Doctoral candidate, English, University of California-Los Angeles: Unexpected Traces: Searching for Nineteenth-century African American presence and print culture in the McCracken Research Library Archives

2012 – 2013 Fellows:

Emily Burns: The Native as Naive: Playing Indian in France

Maryrose Casey: Performing Native Americans: Buffalo Bill and the Embodiment of the Wild West

Karen Jones: The Bison in the Room: Taxidermy Animals, Storytelling, and the American West

Stephanie Knappe: Art Perpetuating Fame: The Posters of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West

David J. Silverman: Thundersticks: Firearms and the Transformation of Native America.

2011 – 2012 Fellows:

Chris Dixon, University of Strathclyde, Scotland: Buffalo Bill in Barcelona

Andrew Hershberger, Bowling Green State University: Photography and Geology: Interdisciplinary Readings on Early USGS-Era Photographers

Gregory Hinton, author, filmmaker, independent curator: Out West at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center

Ashley Hlebinsky, University of Delaware: Westerns and Western (Classical) Theatre: The Glamorization and Demonization of Firearms in the Arts

Jameson Sweet, University of Minnesota: Indians, Dressed and Half Dressed and Undressed: Army Wives, Indian Women, and Clothing in the West, 1848 – 1890

2010 – 2011 Fellows:

Angela DeMontigny, Independent scholar, Six Nations Indian Reservation, Ontario, Canada: western clothing and accessory research

Chris Dixon, Senior Research Fellow, University of Strathclyde, Department of Modern Language: Researching book, Buffalo Bill in Barcelona

Andre Kohler, Public Relations Manager, Karl-May-Museum, Deutschland, Germany: Buffalo Bill and the Wild West in Germany

Herb Thompson: Professor/Division Chair, Neff Education Center, Emory & Henry College. Research for book The Edges of the West: A Literature of Hope for the Future

Laurel Wilson, Professor, Textile and Apparel Management, Curator of Missouri Historic Costume and Textile Collection, University of Missouri, Columbia: Curate and teach Summer Institute program on Dressed Just Right: An Evolution of Western Style from Function to Flamboyance

Lacy Winninger, Independent scholar, Powell, WY: Explore the intricacies of western dress through researching the evolution of garment construction and materials

2009 – 2010 Fellows:

Steven Bradley, PhD, Associate Professor of Art History, Mesa State College of Colorado, Grand Junction, CO: Study of Frank Tenney Johnson and W.H.D. Koerner collections

Michelle Anne Delaney, PhD, Senior Program Officer / Director of the Center for the American Experience, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC: Study of the Kasebier photograph collection and exhibit plan

Arthur Middleton, Graduate student, Department of Zoology and Physiology, University of Wyoming, Laramie: History and changing status of the Clarks Fork elk herd; effects of environmental change, predators, and harvest

Elaine Nelson, Independent scholar, Albuquerque, NM: Posing for Profits, Heroes in the Hills: Tracing America’s National Identity in the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming

Laura L. Scheiber, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN: Conceiving the Wilderness: Image, Place, and Ritual in the Rocky Mountain West

2008 – 2009 Fellows:

Jaime Allison III, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA: Life in the Semi-Sovereign Nation: Energy Development, Sovereignty, and Change Among the Crow and Northern Cheyenne

Gordon R. Andrus, Independent scholar, Cody, WY: Saddle Making in the Northern Rocky Mountains and Plains Region

Patricia A. Billingsley, Independent scholar, Williamsburg, MA: Annotating the 1932 – 1933 Valley Ranch Journal of Philip H. Cummings

Jim Garry, Independent scholar, Cody, WY: Sights and Sounds of Yellowstone Archive

Robert D. Jakubowski, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO: Research for a Systematic Investigation of Museum Relevant Factors and Promoting Sustainability in a Four-Phase Approach

Jeremy Johnston, Northwest College, Powell, WY: Four-Toes, Three-Toes, Two-Toes, Wahb: Ernest Thompson-Seton and the Literary Creation of Renegade Bears in the Yellowstone Ecosystem

Mary L. Keller, University of Wyoming, living in Cody, WY: Wyoming Cultural Landscapes: The Big Horn Basin

Dorothy H. Patent, Author, Missoula, MT: Children’s book on The Relationship between Plains Indian Peoples and Horses

Marcy Lee Reiser, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO: Dendrochronology in the Greybull River Sustainable Landscape Ecology Program

Sandra Sagala, Independent scholar, Erie, PA: William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s Movie—The Indian Wars—Filmed in 1913

2007 – 2008 Fellows:

Michael Amundson, Northern Arizona University: Wyoming Time and Again Revisited: A Third Look at the Wyoming Scenes of Photographer Joseph E. Stimson

Margaret Ball, University of Colorado, Boulder: ‘A Barbarous Practice:’ Trophy-taking, Race, and Gender in America

Ken Blackbird, Independent photographer, Cody, WY: European Views of Native Americans

Walter R. Echo-Hawk, Jr., Attorney, Boulder, CO: Law & History dinner lecturer, 2008.

Jim Garry, Independent scholar, Cooke City, MT: Yellowstone Bears and Bear People

Mary Murphy, Professor, History and Philosophy, Montana State University, Bozeman: Old Men, Friendship, and Photographs

Lynn Saltonstall, Graduate student, Yale University, New Haven, CT: Fleeting Fixity and the Limits of Photography: William Henry Jackson’s Yellowstone Views

Michael Wise, Doctoral candidate, University of Minnesota: Five Minutes Work: Photography, Animals, and Oil in Progressive-era Montana

2006 – 2007 Fellows:

Gretchen Adams, PhD, Department of History, Texas Tech University, Lubbock: William F. Cody, An American Life

Dan Gagliasso, Independent scholar, documentary film maker: After the Wild West Fades: Buffalo Bill in Popular Culture, 1918 – 2006

Jim Garry, Independent scholar: Oral histories and CD, Cowboy Songs and Range Ballads

Andrea Green, Doctoral candidate in Biological Sciences, University of Arkansas-Fayetteville: Evaluation of Sagebrush Mowing Treatments as Habitat Enhancement Strategy for Greater Sage-grouse

Jeremy Johnston, Northwest College, Powell, WY: Buffalo Bill and Teddy: The Distant Relationship of Two Rough Riders and the Economic Development of Northwest Wyoming

W. Hudson Kensel, PhD, Professor Emeritus, California State University-Fresno: The Valley Ranch and Irving H. “Larry” Larom: A History of Dude Ranching on the South Fork of the Shoshone River

Craig M. Lee, PhD, Anthropology Lecturer, Doctoral candidate, University of Colorado, Boulder: Program Development and Ethnohistoric Context for Assessing the Prehistoric Ecology of Greater Yellowstone Area Snow and Ice Resources

Anne MacKinnon, PhD, Adjunct Professor, University of Wyoming School of Environment and Natural Resources, Laramie, WY: Buffalo Bill Cody’s Dam Project

Naomi Ollie, Master of Arts candidate, Colorado State University, Fort Collins: An Environmental Archaeology Study of Landscape Change and Stability in the Absaroka Range, Park County, Wyoming

Julie Schimmel, PhD, Independent scholar, Inaugural Curator of Stark Museum of Art, Orange, TX: John Mix Stanley, A Frontier Painter and Entrepreneur

Marie Watkins, PhD, Assistant Professor, Art History, Furman University, Greeneville, SC: Expanding the Discourse on Joseph Henry Sharp