Dear Friends of History at Fort Lewis College,

Welcome to the History Department’s Spring 2024 Newsletter addendum edition! I know what you are thinking, they just put out an issue a few months ago. Well, we are just too excited to wait until the Fall to tell you about what we have accomplished in the second half of the Spring semester as well as some exciting Summer projects.

We have been able to do some amazing work with our students in large part to our generous donors who continue to support us. For example see below where students went to a professional conference that the department was able to offset all costs for the students (much like the trip eight of our students took in the Fall to Alabama; see below for a brief recap, but also information on the presentation several of them offered in March of this year).

Some of our students are headed off to do archival research this summer and the department will be able to financially assist a few of them who got Undergraduate Research grants in this important work for their 496 senior capstone papers which they will then present in December of this year. The next newsletter will include some of their personal stories of the engaging and exciting work they will be encountering. Just for a teaser those students are going to Alaska, Denver, Georgia, and China to do this important work. So stay tuned!

The HEARTH continues to be a great space for students to study, tutor, as well as socialize and hang out. The History Club continues to be quite active as well, see their newsletter contribution below.

We hope you have a great summer!

And as always if you have any feedback, stories to share, please contact me at martin_m@fortlewis.edu

On Saturday April 13, six seniors presented their senior capstone work as part of the History Department’s senior capstone experience. Molly Quinn-Clynes won the History Department’s award for Best Thesis.

History Majors Give Papers at Statewide Historical Conference

Five students from Fort Lewis College, all history majors in the Department’s Senior research seminar, got their first taste of a professional conference when they presented abridged versions of their theses at the Colorado Regional Conference of Phi Alpha Theta, the national honorary historical society, on Saturday, April 20, 2024. The conference was held at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs (UCCS), whose Departments of History and Anthropology sponsored the event. Both undergraduate and graduate students presented papers. The FLC students represented the Iota Pi chapter, and students and faculty came from colleges and universities all over Colorado.

The FLC students traveled with faculty advisor Michael Fry to Colorado Springs on Friday, participated in the all-day conference on Saturday, and returned on Sunday to Durango. The students proposed abstracts of their papers in January, and they submitted the entire papers in March. At the conference, they had ten minutes for a succinct oral rendition of their papers, followed by questions from the audience. Professor Fry moderated the panel entitled “Gender and Sexuality in History.” Lunch included a keynote address by Dr. George Bayuga, a faculty member in the UCCS Department of Anthropology, entitled “Wrestling with Giant Ants: The Historian’s Role in Engaging and Transforming Social Theory.” During his speech he mentioned specifically Molly Quinn-Clynes’ work! The Fort Lewis students presented the following papers:

Mcallan Craig: "Cold War 'Containment' and U.S Policy Towards Yugoslavia: The Mutual Defense Assistance Act, 1948-1954"

James Ianni: "'An Unmitigated Rascal,' Henry Steel Olcott: Colonialism, Civilization,

and Protestant Buddhism in Ceylon"

Molly Quinn-Clynes: "Powder Pioneers: The Norwegian Snowshoe’s Influence on

Work and Social Cohesion in Routt County, Colorado"

Vivian Smotherman (Fort Lewis College) - "Chevalier d’Eon: Exploiting and Challenging Gender Norms in France, (1728-1810)"

Sage Wilber: "IRA Recruitment: Adolescent Risk Navigation and Decision Making, 1960-1979"

In June 2024 history student Daniel Frauenhoff and history professor Andrew Gulliford will fly north to Alaska, arrive in Fairbanks, and begin a river adventure canoeing 110 miles down Birch Creek in the Steese National Conservation Area. The trip is being arranged and led by FLC alumni in Alaska and will help Dr. G. learn more about Alaska’s back country. Our largest Native group at FLC are Navajos, but our second largest group are Native Alaskans, so it is important for our professors to learn more about Alaska. This river trip, 120 miles from the Arctic Circle, and research project has financial support from Dean Sarah Schultz and her School of Arts & Sciences (SOAS) Mini-grant, first offered in spring 2024.

Dr. G. will visit Fairbanks and the surrounding areas including the Steese National Conservation Area and the Fairbanks BLM office. Upon returning he will finalize the conclusion for his book manuscript and also connect with Aspen Frick who is focusing her senior thesis on decolonization and passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. She wants to, in her words, incorporate “issues of colonization and how Indigenous Alaskans live in a post-colonial world that has severed their connection to the land, and through that, each other.”

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He continues to hear from former students and Dr. G. welcomes email contacts and connections. Like all of us in the History Department, he is proud of our student successes. Email Dr. G. at Gulliford_a@fortlewis.edu

As you read in the last newsletter several students went to Alabama with Drs Paul Kuenker and Ellen Paul. On Tuesday, March 26, in the Center of Southwest Studies’ Lyceum six of the students presented “A Change is Gonna Come”, a panel and Q&A event on their trip that was well attended and generated a lot of important conversations.

Michael just completed his second year as Chair of the department and is now going to take a bit of a breather this summer. He will not be traveling to Europe this summer. He will however be able to accomplish significant work on two of his book projects he has been slowly editing during the academic year. The summer will allow him the time to complete the one project and move the other one into manuscript form to submit to the editor. The first book is the critical edition of an Irish-Latin commentary on the Psalms written in Ireland c. 800. The second book is a monograph discussion peasant theology of the Carolingian period (c. 750—950).

Ellen will travel to Prague, Czechia this summer to teach a course or 5 weeks (24 June-26 July) on the Holocaust and Central European Jewish culture for USAC, University Studies Abroad Consortium.  Two Fort Lewis College students will be joining her, along with American students from other schools in the consortium (College of Charleston, Cal-Poly, University of Nevada-Reno, and others). This is her second stint teaching for this study abroad program (last time was 2019).  The course focuses on the long history of Czech & Austrian/German Jews in Bohemia (like Franz Kafka) and features field trips to museums, synagogues, a medieval Czech city, Jewish cemeteries, and sites of the Holocaust.

On Tuesday, April 23rd, the History Department welcomed Dr. Sam Bass, an Assistant Professor in Chinese history at the University of Toronto and good friend of Doug Ober, to deliver the annual Reece Kelly Distinguished Lecture in History. Named in honor of former FLC History Professor, Dr. Reece Kelly, the Reece Kelly Lecture is one of the History Department’s largest public events and brings to campus some of the best historians teaching and working in the globe today. Speaking to a large crowd of students, faculty, staff and community members, Dr. Bass’ talk explored the history of slavery and abolition in 18th and 19th century China, under the Manch Qing Empire. Dr. Bass concluded his talk by emphasizing that he did not believe the Qing Empire to be an abolitionist empire—despite emancipating millions of enslaved peoples—but rather an empire moving towards abolition as a byproduct of changing laws. 

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We are very proud of our alumni and would love to share their stories. Please email us with stories of how you have used your History degree, or places you have visited with some historical connections you would love to share, along with a photo of you there, or at your job putting that degree to work!

We also have a map of the United States in our department hallway. We would love to pinpoint where our alumni are at. Eventually we would like to build up an electronic version to include on our website in the Alumni Updates section. Please let us know where you are at!

If there are any errors in the profiles below please let us know and we apologize in advance.

Here is a quick update on one of our alums, Fabian Martinez, a double major in History and English (2018). As the title of this April 22, 2024 article in the Durango Herald explains: “Southern Ute archivist dives into boarding school history”.

As always, your ongoing contributions are most appreciated and helps our faculty and students do the work that you have been reading about above. Please consider donating to one of our funds to help us continue to do that work.

History Associates Fund

Reese Kelly Excellence Fund

Public History Fund