Past Research Fellows

2015

Visiting Scholar Fellows

  • Emanuele Piccardo, architect, photographer, filmmaker, and curator and founder of the non-profit publisher Archphoto
    “Living the Frontier: the Construction of Vision”
  • Melissa Poll, PhD Candidate, Drama & Theatre, Royal Holloway, University of London
    “Beyond Beads and Buckskin: Indigeneity and Globalization on the Contemporary Stage”

Autry Summer Fellow

  • Kristina Borrman, PhD student, Art History, UCLA
    “Utopia at Topolobampo: Communitarian Ideals Situated at the Nexus of International Trade”

Los Angeles Corral of Westerners Fellow

  • Dr. Michael Brescia, Associate Director, Head of Public Programs, and Associate Curator of Ethnohistory, Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona; Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Arizona
    “Water Rights and Ranching in Hispanic California and Arizona”

VIVA Foundation Fellow

  • Dr. Alison Goodrum, Research Professor, Department of Apparel, Manchester Metropolitan University
    “Buckskin and Ballgowns: Dressing for the Dude Ranch in Interwar America”

2014

Visiting Scholar Fellows

  • Mabel Rosenheck, PhD candidate, Screen Cultures, Northwestern University
    “Where the Reel West Meets the Real West: Popular Media and the Historiography of the West at the Autry National Center”
  • Catherine Newell, Assistant Professor, Religious Studies and English Composition, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Miami Coral Gables, Florida
    “The Significance of the Frontier in American Space History: Manifest Destiny, the American West, and the Final Frontier”

Archaeological Collections Research Fellow

  • Monica Corpuz, MA Student, Anthropology, California State University, Northridge
    “Unearthing the Mysteries of the Frank Palmer Archaeology Collection”

Los Angeles Corral of Westerners Fellow

  • Kiara Maria Vigil, Assistant Professor, American Studies, Amherst College
    “Natives in Transit: Indian Entertainment, Urban Life, and Activism”

VIVA Foundation Fellow

  • Elizabeth Oliphant, PhD Candidate, English Department, University of Pittsburgh
    “Charles Lummis, Seeing America First”

2013

Visiting Scholar Fellows

  • Klint Ericson, Ph.D. candidate, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
    “Sumptuous and Beautiful, As They Were: Architectural Mission, Form, Everyday Life, and Cultural Encounter in a Seventeenth-Century New Mexico”
  • Rebecca Scofield, Ph.D. candidate in American Studies, Harvard University.
    “Riding Bareback: Gender, Sexuality, and the Performance of Danger in American Rodeo”
  • Dr. Natale Zappia, Assist. Professor of History, Whittier College.
    “Food Frontiers: How Native Consumers and Pathways Forged the Early American West”
    Funds provided by the Viva Foundation

Los Angeles Corral of Westerners Fellow

  • Dr. Gabriel Gutierrez, Director for the Study of Peoples of the Americas and Professor, Chicano/a Studies, Cal State University Northridge.
    “California Indians on Rancho Azusa: Labor, Consumption, and Historical Agency”

2012

Visiting Scholar Fellows

  • Daniel Polk, PhD candidate, Princeton University, Department of Anthropology
    “Conquering Nature: Irrigation Development in the Borderlands, 1892-1910”
  • Sonya Abrego, PhD. Candidate, The Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History
    "Westernwear and the Postwar American Lifestyle 1945 -1975"
  • Amy Tofte, playwright,
    "WhiteDevil-LovingMother" (full length play)

Autry Summer Fellow

  • Lawrence W. Mojado II, Masters student, UCLA, American Indian Studies Interdepartmental Program
    "Cupeno Historical Memory: Self, Place, and Story"

Los Angeles Westerners Fellow

  • Dr. Karen Jones, Senior Lecturer in US and Environmental History, University of Kent, Canterbury
    “Horsepower and Heroism on the Equine Frontier: Warhorse and the Winning of the West, 1860-1890”

Jonathan Heritage Foundation Fellow

  • Sarah McCormick Seekatz, PhD Candidate, UC Riverside
    "Blind Date–The creation of an Arabian Fantasy in the Deserts of Southern California"

2011

Visiting Scholar Fellowships

  • Brett Myhren, PhD Candidate, English, University of Southern California
    “The Place Without a Past: Literature, History, and Culture in California, 1510–1846”
  • Martha Ann Francisca Vallejo-McGettigan, Independent Scholar and Vallejo Family Member
    “Francisca Vallejo-McGettigan and the Suysun Tribe”
  • David Walker, PhD Candidate, Department of Religious, Yale University
    “Contested Geographies: Religion and Land in the American West, 1863–1905”

Autry Summer Fellowship

  • Jean-Paul R. deGuzman, Doctoral Candidate, American History, UCLA
    “‘Makin’ New Friends Where the West Begins’: Constructing Histories and Images of the San Fernando Valley”

Los Angeles Westerners Fellowship

  • Emily McEwen, PhD Candidate, Public History, University of California, Riverside
    “Dramatize What You Do: Historical Pageantry, Transnational Trade, and the Mission Inn’s Role in Reimagining a Region’s Identity”

Jonathan Heritage Foundation Fellowships

  • Heather Shannon, PhD student, Art History, Rutgers
    “Primitive Camera: Adam Clark Vroman and the American Southwest, 1895–1904”
  • Adam Arenson, Assistant Professor, History, University of Texas, El Paso
    “Privately Sponsored Public History: Howard Ahmanson, the Millard Sheets Studio, and the Art and Architecture of the Home Savings Banks”

2010

Visiting Scholar Fellowship

  • Laura Isabel Serna, PhD, Assistant Professor of History Department, Florida State University
    “The Photo-Play Made Mexican”
  • Jason Ruiz, PhD, Assistant Professor of American Studies, University of Notre Dame
    “Americans in the Treasure House: Travel to Mexico in the American Imagination, 1876-1920”
  • Kirby Pringle, PhD candidate, Loyola University, Chicago
    “Developing the West: Country Music and Western Film in the San Fernando Valley”

Autry Summer Fellowship

  • Matthew Luckett, PhD candidate, History Department, UCLA
    “Trails of Violence, Memories of Yesterday: John Bratt, Vigilantism and the Imagining of the Wild West”
  • Michael Richardson, PhD candidate, History Department, UCLA
    “Bound in Battle: Richard, Pratt, American Indians, and the US Army on the Southern Plains, 1867-1875”
  • Nicole Goude, PhD candidate, World Arts and Cultures, UCLA
    “Native American Photography: Personal Memories, Public Records”

Los Angeles Westerners Fellowship

  • Sarah Keyes, PhD candidate, University of Southern California
    “Circling Back: Migration to the Pacific and the Reconfiguration of American, 1820-1900”

Jonathan Heritage Foundation Fellowship

  • Jennifer Vanore, PhD candidate, University of Chicago
    “The Call to Care: Religion and the Making of the Modern Healthcare Industry, 1930-1980”

2009

Visiting Scholar Fellowship

  • Lawrence Culver, Associate Professor, Department of History,
    Utah State University
    “Manifest Disaster: Climate, Catastrophe and the Making of America”
  • Robert Oppenheim, Assistant Professor, Department of Asian Studies, University of Texas at Austin
    “Stewart Culin, Frank H. Cushing, and the Asian Frontier of Early American Anthropology”
  • Sir Christopher Frayling, Cultural historian, author and independent scholar
    “Entering our House Justified – the American Western Film Since John Ford”

Autry Summer Fellowship

  • Laura Redford, PhD candidate, American History, UCLA
    “Separate Spaces: Residential Segregation in Los Angeles 1890s-1920”

Los Angeles Westerners Fellowship

  • Dr. John Koegel, Associate Professor of Music, CSU Fullerton
    “Mexican-American Music in the Lummis Cylinder Collection”

Jonathan Heritage Foundation Fellowship

  • John Macias, PhD candidate in History, Claremont Graduate University
    “Mission Memories: Romance and Historical Interpretation in San Gabriel, 1900-1930”

2008

Autry Summer Fellowship

  • Erika Perez, Fellow, American Cultures, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles
    “Religious practices of sponsorship for Catholic sacraments in early California”

Visiting Scholar Fellowship

  • Vera Parham, Assistant Professor, History, University of Hawaii, Hilo
    “Fishing in the West: Taming an Economy”
  • Catherine Cocks, PhD, Independent Scholar
    “Tropical Whiteness: Tourism, Culture, and the Modern Self, 1880-1940”
    “The Pleasures of Degeneration: Climate, Race, and the Origins of the Global Tourist South in the Americas,” Discourse (June 2009): 215-235.
  • Mary Zundo, PhD candidate, Art History, University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign
    “Mapping Destiny: Cartography and 19th Century American Art of the Frontier”

Westerners Fellowship

  • Albert Fu, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Kutztown University, Pennsylvania
    “Landscapes of Spanish-Colonial Revival: Popular Culture and Urban Development in Southern California”

2007

Autry Summer Fellowship

  • Paul Schwinn, PhD candidate, History Department, UCLA
    Representations of race and gender in the popular culture of the U.S. West.

Visiting Scholar Fellowship

  • Anna Bánhegyi, PhD candidate, History, Southern Methodist University
    “Where Marx Meets Osceola: Ideology and Mythology in the Eastern Bloc Western”
  • James Kessenides, PhD, Assistant Professor of History, University of South Florida
    “Natural Possessions: Landscape Visions of Los Angeles, 1876-1911”
  • Dr. Martin Padget, PhD, Department of English, University of Wales, Aberystwyth
    “Travel Writing and the American Southwest, 1540 – present day”
  • Michelle Kleehammer, doctoral candidate, Department of History, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
    “Chasing the Climate Cure in the American West: Geographies of Health and Nation in Late Nineteenth- and early Twentieth-Century American Culture”

Los Angeles Westerners Fellowship

2006

Autry Summer Fellowship

  • Joshua Paddison, PhD, ACLS Post-Doctoral Fellow,Indiana University
    "American Heathens: Religion, Race, and Reconstruction in California"

Visiting Scholar Fellowship

  • Jason Pierce, PhD, Assistant Professor of History, Angelo State University, San Angelo, Texas
    "Making the White Man's West: Whiteness and the Promotion, Development, and Settlement of the American West"
  • Stacy Camp, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Justice Studies, University of Idaho
    "Consuming Citizenship: Early 20th Century Anglo American Consumer Reform Movements in Mexican American Los Angeles,"

Los Angeles Westerners Fellowship

2005

Autry Summer Fellowship

  • Karen Wilson, PhD, Occidental College-Autry Fellow and Autry Guest Curator
    "Mrs. H. Newmark's European Travel Diaries"

Visiting Scholar Fellowship

  • Elizabeth Kalbfleisch, PhD, Art History, Concordia University, Montreal
    "Gladys Knight Harris: Home Economics, Ethnography and the Politics of Sentiment in Women's Friendship"
  • Elizabeth Lykken, School of Design and Fashion, Stephens College
    "Western Fringe in Context: Parsing Out the Dimensions of an American Icon"

2004

Autry Summer Fellowship

  • Citlali Sosa-Riddel, PhD candidate, UCLA
    "Empire, Local Engagement, and Gender"

Visiting Scholar Fellowship

  • Adrianne Santina, PhD, University of North Texas, Art History
    "Visible Icons, Invisible People: Tipis in American Popular and Visual Culture,"
  • Ruth Ellen Gruber
    "Sauerkraut Cowboys"

2003

Autry Summer Fellowship

Visiting Scholar Fellowship

2002

Autry Summer Fellowship

Visiting Scholar Fellowship

  • Debra Buchholtz, Ph.D
    "Re-presenting Custer: Cultural Politics on the Little Bighorn"

2001

Autry Summer Fellowship