Sponsored Research

The Ivan Doig Center offers competitive grant opportunities for faculty and graduate students who are working on research topics related to the North American West.

Faculty are eligible to apply for the Ivan Doig Center's Faculty Research Award and the Ivan Doig Faculty Writing Award.

Graduate students are eligible to apply for the Ivan Doig Center's Graduate Student Research Awards and the Ivan Doig Center Dissertation Fellowship.

View past awardees 

For current calls for proposals and deadlines, please go to Call for Proposals.

Works to Celebrate

We are pleased to celebrate works completed with support from the Ivan Doig Center and recent works by members of our faculty advisory board. 

Andi Powers

 

“American Fantasies and Imagined Histories: Ethnic Play and Settler Colonialism in Twentieth-Century Wyoming”

My project examines three case studies unified through ethnic play, the interrelated structures of settler colonialism and white supremacy, geographical location, and time period. This project employs an interdisciplinary approach that combines original archival historical research, and literary and cultural analysis while drawing on Indigenous and Black frameworks. This study concludes that in twentieth-century Wyoming, redface and blackface filled Native and Black cultural absences in order to maintain the structures of settler colonialism and white supremacy. At the same time, this dissertation examines settler colonialism, slavery, and white supremacy in relation to the experiences of Black and Native peoples and shows how ethnic play both maintains and disrupts the race and gender hierarchies created by the interrelated structures of settler colonialism and white supremacy.

Michele Corriel

 

"The Montana modernists: redefining Western art"

Since my graduation in December, 2019, I took a position as Assistant Teacher Professor in the MSU Honors College. I also started an art consulting business working with artists and families of deceased artists concerned with legacy issues, and I have been a contributing writer for various regional and national magazines. My dissertation,  "The Montana modernists: redefining Western art", talks about the first generation of modern artists in Montana and their influence on the way Montanans looked at themselves. That manuscript is currently being considered by Washington State University Press for publication in the Spring of 2022. 

Dan Hanson

 

"Western American Spectral Studies: Haunting in Film, Literature, and Landscape"

My dissertation examines the way western American cultural expressions involving “haunting,” when taken seriously, can provide much needed insights into both the hegemonic structure of the white, male, civilizing Turnerian narrative and “post-western” expressions which challenge this nationalized story. This study is important since the Western traditionally articulates America's foundational identity and because haunting narratives have more explicitly arisen in the post-WWII era in a way that suggests the Western and the West continue to wrestle with those haunting voices and ideas lost, neglected, and/or pathologized in the rush to celebrate an "exceptional," monolithic American identity.  

Post graduation, I've been teaching at MSU in the University Studies department. Additionally, I am currently revising both select chapters and my dissertation for publication.

Dale Martin

 

Ties, Rails, and Telegraph Wires:Railroads and Communities in Montana and the West. Dale Martin. Helena, MT: Montana Historical Society Press, 2018.

Ties, Rails, and Telegraph Wires:Railroads and Communities in Montana and the West vividly relates the story of rail transport’s centrality to the lives of westerners and their communities.  Railways linked towns and cities to the nation’s commerce, carrying passengers, mail, express, and freight.  The telegraph pole lines that followed the tracks were the primary communications of the era.  Trains brought political figures, Chautauquas, sports teams, and circuses to all corners of the west.  Using extensive research in historical sources and engaging memoirs, Martin brings to life the essential role railways played in creating vibrant communities and powerful memories, and reflects on the social losses that accompanied the vanishing trains.

Just one of the reviews:

“Martin’s writing provides a timely reminder that railroads not only revolutionized travel and changed the structure of corporations, but that they also reshaped the daily routines and social lives of communities.”--Montana Magazine of Western History

Dale Martin is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of History & Philosophy and a popular lecturer for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute  (OLLI) in Bozeman.  He has worked in archaeological excavation and the field study of historic buildings and bridges.  Dale has watched and ridden trains on four continents.

Gretchen Minton

 

Shakespeare in Montana: Big Sky Country’s Love Affair with the World’s Most Famous Writer. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2020.

Winner of the 2020 Montana Book Award, Shakespeare in Montana uncovers a vast array of different voices that capture the state’s love affair with the world’s most famous writer. From mountain men, pioneers, and itinerant acting companies in mining camps to the contemporary popularity of Shakespeare in the Parks throughout Montana, the book chronicles the stories of residents across Big Sky Country who have been attracted to the words and works of Shakespeare. Minton explores this unique relationship and provides considerable insight into the myriad places and times in which Shakespeare’s words have been heard and discussed.

Just one of the reviews:

“For over two centuries, the works of Shakespeare have found a home under the big skies of Montana. Gretchen Minton is the ideal guide on this fascinating tour of one extraordinary state’s relationship with one extraordinary writer.”—Paul Prescott, author of Reviewing Shakespeare: Journalism and Performance from the Eighteenth Century to the Present

Gretchen E. Minton is Professor of English and an acclaimed scholar of Shakepeare and his contemporaries.  She has edited texts on Timon of Athens, Troilus and Cressida, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Revenger’s Tragedy, as well as the first commentary on the book of Revelation written in English, John Bale’s The Image of Both Churches.  Additionally, Gretchen is co-founder of Montana InSite Theater (MIST) whose members use classical texts to explore environmental issues in site-specific locations.

Bill Wyckoff

 

Riding Shotgun with Norman Wallace: Rephotographing the Arizona Landscape

William Wyckoff. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2020.

In Riding Shotgun with Norman Wallace, Bill Wyckoff celebrates the photographic legacy of Norman Grant Wallace, whose work as an Arizona highway engineer afforded him the opportunity to survey every corner of the Grand Canyon State. From 1906 to 1969 Wallace photographed the state’s natural and rural landscapes; its burgeoning infrastructure including roads, bridges, and dams; and its towns and cities, some of which experienced exponential growth following World War II. Nearly one hundred years later, Wyckoff retraces Wallace’s southwestern travels using the engineer’s photographs and meticulous notebooks as a guide. Wyckoff rephotographs many of Wallace’s iconic vantage points, giving us a historical tour of Arizona, a “then-and-now” viewpoint that also tells the personal story of Wyckoff’s own vicarious travels with Wallace through Arizona’s vast countryside and its urban centers and small towns.

Just one of the reviews:

“Wyckoff has spent his entire career looking carefully, thinking about what he is seeing, and communicating his thoughts in prose that is rich and refreshing, much to the benefit and delight of his readers. Maybe one day some plucky young scholar will have the presence of mind and good fortune to hop in a car and ride shotgun with William Wyckoff.”

--The AAG Review of Books

 Bill Wyckoff is Professor Emeritus of geography at Montana State University.  Known for his energetic and generous teaching, Bill retired from MSU in spring 2020 shortly after publication of Riding Shotgun with Norman Wallace. He is the author and coauthor of numerous books and articles on the American West, including How to Read the American West: A Field Guide, On the Road Again: Montana’s Changing Landscape; and Creating Colorado: The Making of a Western American Landscape, 1860-1940.

Catherine Zabinski

 

Amber Waves: The Extraordinary Biography of Wheat, from Wild Grass to World Megacrop Catherine Zabinski. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020.

Amber Waves tells the story of a group of grass species that first grew in scattered stands in the foothills of the Middle East until our ancestors discovered their value as a source of food. Over thousands of years, we moved their seeds to all but the polar regions of Earth, slowly cultivating what we now know as wheat, and in the process creating a world of cuisines that uses wheat seeds as a staple food. As ecologist Catherine Zabinski shows us, a biography of wheat is not only the story of how plants ensure their own success: from the earliest breads to the most mouthwatering pastas, it is also a story of human ingenuity in producing enough food for ourselves and our communities.

Just one of the reviews:

“If it hadn’t been for a capricious interloper named goatgrass mixing into wheat’s gene pool half a million years ago, our daily staple of bread—not to mention birthday cakes, mac and cheese, and pepperoni pizza—might never have existed. . . . Amber Waves nimbly segues into a socio-agro primer, providing a crash course in genetics, plant breeding, and agronomy. . . . Zabinski is a reliably optimistic guide, pointing us toward a hopeful food future. ‘As a species,’ she observes, ‘we have a stunning capacity for creativity and problem solving. Imagine if we focused all that capacity on optimizing agricultural production in the most environmentally sustainable way.’” -- Wall Street Journal

Cathy Zabinski is Professor of plant and soil ecology in the Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences.  She received a fellowship from the Arthur P. Sloan Foundation to work on Amber Waves.  Cathy was honored with the Women in Science Distinguished Professorship in 2020 and the Anna K. Fridley Distinguished Teaching Award in 2019. Having completed her study of wheat, she is now working on a book on wine.

2023-2024 Research Awards

Faculty Writing Award Recipient

• Michael Reidy (History & Philosophy) - "Vertical History in the West: the Consequences of King"

Dissertation Fellowship Recipients

• Katie Montana (History & Philosophy) - "Funerals and Memorials in the United States as Forms of Everyday Resistance during the Second World War, 1939-1945"
• Carol Chang (History & Philosophy) - "Who Owns History? Institutions and the Reclamation of Indigenous Cultural Identity"

Graduate Research Award Recipients

• Alex Miller (History & Philosophy) - “Cowboy Boots and No PFD: Changing Economic Identities in Vernal, Utah”
• Braeden Meyer (Film & Photography) - "Thought & Memory"
• Angus Cummings (History & Philosophy) - "Buffalo Commons: An Oral History"
• Jacob Northcutt (History & Philosophy) - "Vertical Frontiers: Mountaineering in the American West"
• Nicole Hall (American Studies) - "Exploring the Intersectionality of Experience in Regional Literature through Ivan Doig and James Welch"

2022-2023 Research Awards

Faculty Research Award Recipients

• Bridget Kevane (Modern Languages) - A History of Latinos in Montana
• Jan Zauha (Library) - Accessing Montana Food History Archives

Dissertation Fellowship Recipients

• Jacey Anderson (History and Philosophy) - "Stories from Sacrifice Zones: Resource Conflict and Resistance in the Americaas, 1970-2017"
• Jaime Jacobsen (American Studies) - "Towards Transnationalism: Exploring Venezuelan Immigration Experiences in the Rocky Mountain West through Cocreated Documentary"
• Jacob Northcutt (History and Philosophy) - "Vertical Frontiers: Mountaineering in the American West, 1871-1995"
• Tim Schehl (American Studies) - "Transnational Privatization Security Assemblages and North American Pipeline Conflicts: A study in Power and Authority in the New American Republic"

Graduate Research Award Recipients

• Laurel Angell - "Missed Opportunities: The Narrowing of the American Conservation Movement"
• Carol Chang - "Who Owns History? Institutions and the Reclamation of Indigenous Cultural Identity"
• Angus Cummings - "Buffalo Commons: An Oral History"
• Maryrose Hicko - "Wild and Western Women: Prostitution in Bozeman, Montana, 1900-1920"
• Meeri Kataja - "Looking for Those Hardier Settlers': Northern European Settlers in Alaska 1867-1945"
• Jacob Northcutt - "Vertical Frontiers: Mountaineering in the American West, 1871-1995"
• Austin Schoenkopf - "Hot, High, and Dry: Government in the Arid West"

2020-2021 Research Awards

Faculty Research Award Recipients

• Linda Karell (English) - To Give Me Good Gifts

Dissertation Fellowship Recipients

• Micah Chang (History and Philosophy) - "An Amorphous Border: Making Modern Agronomy Across the 49th Parallel"
• Jennifer Dunn (History and Philosophy) - "Superfunded: Recreating Nature in the Post Industrial West"
• Jill Falcon Mackin (History and Philosophy) - "Miinigoowiziwin (That Which is Given to Us): Changing Anishinaabe Food Systems, 1780-1920"
• Casey Pallister (History and Philosophy) - "Policing the Unfit: Eugenics in Twentieth-Century Montana"

Graduate Research Award Recipients

• Jacey Anderson (History and Philosophy) - "Water Over Gold: Historical Narratives and Grassroots Environmentalism"
• Rose Ashley (History and Philosophy) - "Exploring Ideas of Disability and Wilderness: Yellowstone as America's Best, Able-Bodied Idea"
• Micah Chang (History and Philosophy) - "An Amorphous Border: Making Modern Agronomy Across the 49th Parallel"
• Jennifer Dunn (History and Philosophy) - "Superfunded: Recreating Nature in the Post Industrial West"
• Jill Falcon Mackin (History and Philosophy) - "Miinigoowiziwin (That Which is Given to Us): Changing Anishinaabe Food Systems, 1780-1920
• Katie McLain (History and Philosophy) - "Breaking Down a Boom Town: Dispelling Myths of the American West"
• Elise Otto (Geography) - "The Inroads of Resort Economies: The Political Economy of Planning and Commuter Experience in Big Sky, MT"
• Casey Pallister (History and Philosophy) - "Policing the Unfit: Eugenics in Twentieth-Century Montana"

2019-2020 Research Awards

Dissertation Fellowship Recipients

• Michele Corriel (American Studies) - "Origins of the Avant-Garde Movement in Montana"
• Daniel Hanson (American Studies) - "Haunting and Hegemony in the American Post-West"
• Jill Falcon Mackin (History and Philosophy) - "Miinigoowiziwin (That Which is Given to US): Changing Anishinaabe Food Systems, 1780-1920"

2018-2019 Research Awards

Faculty Research Award Recipients

• Alex Harmon (American Studies) - "Unquiet Title: Remapping Indian Country in Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead."
• Bill Wyckoff (Earth Sciences) - "Riding Shotgun with Norman Wallace"

Ivan Doig Center Faculty Writing Award

• Jamie McEvoy (Earth Sciences) - "Drought Planning in the Upper Missouri Headwaters Basin, Montana"
• Alex Harmon (American Studies) - "The Ghosts of Nations Future"

Dissertation Fellowship Recipient

• Robert Briwa (Earth Sciences) - "Seeing State-Directed Heritage in Twentieth Century Montana"

Graduate Research Award Recipients

• Micah Chang (History and Philosophy) - "The Montana Hi-Line: Making the Marginal Central"
• Jennifer Dunn (History and Philosophy) - "Superfunded: Recreating Nature in a Post-Industrial World"
• Kirke Anderson Elsass (History and Philosophy) - "Cementing Montana"
• Daniel Hanson (American Studies) - "Frozen Specters: The Nostalgic Stasis within Montana's Ghost Towns"
• Marsha Small (Earth Sciences) - "Unlocking the Gates of Indian Board School Cemeteries"
• Will Wright (History and Philosophy) - "Nature Unbound: What Gray Wolves, Giant Sequoias, and Monarch Butterflies Tell Us about Large Landscape Conservation"

2017-2018 Research Awards

Faculty Research Award Recipients

• Mary Murphy (History) - “Researching Montana’s Food Heritage”

Dissertation Fellowship Recipient

• Nancy Mahoney (American Studies) - “Archaeology and Exceptionalism in the American West: A Social History of Indians, Amateurs, and Archaeologists in Montana, 1935-1990”

Graduate Research Award Recipients

• Kathryn Bills (Earth Science) - “Coalbed Methane Reclamation Activities in the Powder River Basin, Wyoming: A Community and Policy Perspective”
• Michele Corriel (American Studies) - “The First Montana Modernist Artists: Jessie Wilber at Helen Copeland Gallery”
• Jennifer Dunn (History) - “Superfunded: Recreating Nature in a Post-Industrial World”
• Kathleen Epstein (Earth Science) - “The Amenity Transition and Elk Management in the Greater Yellowstone”
• Jill Falcon Mackin (History) - “Walking in a Sheltered Place: The Ojibwe Seasonal Round on the Northern Plains, 1790-1920”
• Megan Moore (Earth Sciences) - “Public Perception of Natural Water Storage in Montana”
• Andi Powers (American Studies) - “The Empire Ranch”
• Will Wright (History) - “Species Futures: A History of Building Ecological Resilience on North America’s Public Lands”

2016-2017 Research Awards

Faculty Research Award Recipients

• Amanda Hendrix-Komoto (History) - “Imperial Zions: Mormonism & the Politics of Domesticity in the Nineteenth Century”
• Gretchen Minton (English) - “Shakespeare in Montana”
• Rob Petrone (English) - “Collaborative Project with Blackfeet Reservation Alternative High School”
• Bill Wyckoff (Earth Science) - “Historical Landscape Change in Arizona”

Dissertation Fellowship Recipient

• Jennifer Woodcock-Medicine Horse (American Studies) - “Green Museums Waking Up the World: Indigenous and Mainstream Approaches to Exploring Sustainability”

Graduate Research Award Recipients

• Laurel Angell (History) - “Growing Up Wild?: Childhood in Western National Parks”
• Jeff Bartos (History) - “American Mining Engineers and Gold in the British Colonies”
• Nick Bergman (History) - “Towards a More Sustainable Future: Instream Flow Reservations and the Montana Department of Fish and Game in the Yellowstone River Basin”
• Jennifer Dunn (History) - “Superfunded: Recreating Nature in a Post-Industrial World”
• Nancy Mahoney (American Studies) - “What is Looting?”
• Kelsey Matson (History) - “Reading the National and Natural Archives for the Environmental History of Electricity in Three Western NPS Units”
• Tonya Robinson (American Studies) - “Explaining Oklahoma”
• Linnea Sando (Earth Sciences) - “Sheep in the News: Local Journalism and Place Identity in Western American Communities”
• Kristen Smith (Earth Sciences) - “Building Community and Economic Resilience in Resource- Based Communities in the American West”
• Will Wright (History) - “Restoring the Past: Environmental History and Ecological Science on North America’s Public Lands”
• Micaela Young (American Studies) - “Negotiating the Nonnegotiable: Water Infrastructure and Social Issues in Montana”
• Dione Zoanni (Earth Sciences) - “Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Water Governance on Fort Peck Indian Reservation”