Congratulations to the recipients of the 2013 Research Fellowships! Fellows will be doing research at six of our archival facilities across the country. These fellowships are funded by the Foundation for the National Archives.
The National Archives at Boston
Claire M. Dunning, a graduate student at Harvard University, will be doing research for “Neither Public Nor Private Yet Both: How the Nonprofit Sector Reshaped American Cities.” She will look at the nonprofit sector at the local level at the end of the 20th century and will trace the relationship between Federal funding and local nonprofit organizations.
The National Archives at Denver
James Jenks, the lead historian for Montana Preservation Alliance, will be working on “The Northern Cheyenne Homesteaders of Southeast Montana’s Tongue River and Otter Creek Valleys.” He will investigate the location and property ownership status of 46 Northern Cheyenne families who, during the late 19th century, homesteaded on traditional land located on the east side of the Tongue River and in the Otter Creek Valley in southeastern Montana.
The National Archives at Fort Worth
Susan Burch is the Director of the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity at Middlebury College. For the final phase of her research project “Dislocated: Removals, Institutions, and Community Lives in American History,” she will explore the history of the Hiawatha Asylum, the only federal psychiatric institution specifically for American Indians.
The National Archives at Riverside
Melanie Sturgeon is the director of the History and Archives Division at Arizona State Library, Archives, and Public Records. She will be researching records for “Prostitution in the Arizona Territory.” The brothel and the saloon were often among the first businesses located in new settlements of the frontier West. Sturgeon will examine the lives of professional prostitutes, their business strategies, and the economic, physical, and social challenges they faced.
The National Archives at San Francisco
Nicholas Rosenthal, associate professor of history at Loyola Marymount University, will be looking at Native Americans and their move into an increasingly global society during the early 20th century. Using Bureau of Indian Affairs records, he will study Native American history from the end of the Indian Wars to the beginning of World War II for “Moving towards the Mainstream: Native America, 1890-1940.”
The National Archives at St. Louis
Zonnie Gorman, a graduate student in history at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, will use military and personnel records of individual code talkers to trace the origins of the Navajo Code Talker Program and will focus on the “first 29,” the program’s pilot group that created the original code of approximately two hundred Navajo terms.
Our research rooms are open to both advanced and novice researchers. Whether you are working on your thesis or tracing your grandparents, our staff is ready to help you the records you need in the National Archives. Visit a National Archives research room near you!