M.A. Students

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Ethan Bezzek

 

Ethan enjoys researching modern military history broadly and specifically conflicts in Africa. Having never been to Montana before, he is enjoying all the new experiences that living "on the frontier" has to offer.

 

 
 

 

 
 

 

 
 
Samantha Milner stands in front of steep whitewater rapids and evergreen trees

Samantha Milner

 
Sammi is passionate about bison, skiing, and public lands. Her current work focuses on the environmental history of industrial bone mining and bone picking of the Northern Plains bison across three North American sites.
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Katie Montana

 
Katie's research interests include the effects that the Great Depression and Second World War had on cultural communities within the United States. She earned her undergraduate degree in Modern History across the pond at the University of St Andrews. She has had two history articles published -- one that examined the reasons behind the defections of artists during the Cold War and another that analyzed the legalities behind the first trial of Mary, Queen of Scots. You will never catch her on campus without a cup of tea in her hand.
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Mimi Wood

 

Amelia engages research within the greater Environmental Humanities, specifically Environmental History and the ways in which the human/non-human relationship has evolved. Beyond this, Amelia explores creative, cultural media--namely literature, to discover how past and present societies interpret, express, and respond to their experiences with the natural world. Her research will focus on the cultural impacts of and responses to those events classified as “disasters,” through a study of 1910’s, The Big Burn.

 

 
 
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Travis Carioscia

Travis studies environmental history and history of science. He is particularly interested in Antarctic science and exploration with an emphasis on subglacial lake access, ice core science and the rise of climate science since the International Geophysical Year of 1957-1958. Other topics of interest include: Victorian science and mountaineering, and Humboldtian narratives of nature
Alice Wright

Alice Wright

Alice is researching how Buddhist and Shinto religious taboos related to disease and death influence cultural, environmental, and bioethical concerns in twenty-first century Japan. She is particularly interested in industrial disease, Japan’s brain death debates, and the fetal spirit appeasement rituals of mizuko kuyo. Before coming to MSU, she graduated with a triple degree in history, Japanese, and microbiology from the University of Oklahoma. Having spent all her life in the Southwest, Montana’s climate is a welcome change.  

Angus Cummings

Angus Cummings

Angus is interested in studying the history of land management and conservation in the Western United States. He hopes to draw from his experiences recreating and working for conservation projects in the West to inform his studies. He also aspires to work on historical projects to educate and engage community stakeholders in decisions regarding the landscapes they love and rely upon. He enjoys skiing, running, hiking, drawing, and photography

Ph.D. Students & Candidates

Jacey Anderson

Jacey Anderson

Jacey studies grassroots environmentalism in Latin American and the US West. Her broader interests include public history, oral history, transnational history, and the environment.

Laurel Angell

Laurel Angell

 

I study American and Environmental History. I am interested in how a history of missed opportunities between American environmentalists and people of color can provide key lessons for a modern environmental movement at a critical crossroads. What are the historical roots and genealogy of the split between white conservationists and current groups such as the far more diverse Sunrise Movement? What are the key events, decisions or laws that brought us to this modern moment with a national set of environmental groups struggling to be relevant and effective with a broader audience; a predicament that undermines their ability to tackle the challenges of a warming planet – and recognize that climate change is more than an environmental issue, it is at the intersection of socio-economic, racial, gender and cultural inequality issues as well. 

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Carol Chang

 

Carol has a background in fine arts and an Associate degree in environmental biology. She has experience working in various galleries, non-profit art organizations, and museums in Chicago. Her interests are rooted in cultural identities, indigenous identities, nature and biological studies, representation in public history, and accessibility of education. She is currently interested in 19th and 20th century American history.

 

 
 

 

 
 
Kirke Elsass

Kirke Elsass

Kirke is studying how concrete became so ordinary, so broadly embedded in Americans’ behaviors. This entails tracing not only hydraulic cement technologies but also cultural developments of footwear shaped by sidewalks, styles of painting on concrete walls, and habits of hanging out in basements. His general interests are in environment, geology, geography, and industrialization.

 

 
 
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Katie McLain

Katie comes from a background in government where she worked on international programs in drug interdiction and law enforcement. Her research interests revolve around the unique nature of drug policy and substance use in the Rocky Mountain West. 
Jacob Northcutt, Graduate Student

Jacob Northcutt

 
Jacob is an environmental historian of the American West. He engages environmental humanities perspectives, such as the agency of the more-than-human, in his place-based narratives. His master's thesis, "The Wasatch Oasis: A Deep, Environmental History," sought to understand the Wasatch Front as a place defined by water. Jacob believes deeply in interdisciplinary scholarship, which explains his research interests in environmental history, deep history, and the environmental humanities.
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Steve Petersen

 

Steve Petersen studies the American West with an emphasis on the intersection between religion and the environment. His current research looks at Mormon Trail re-enactments in context of the environment. 

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LaTrelle Scherffius

 
LaTrelle’s research interests include a history of photography and the American West, frontiers and borders (particularly the U.S. Mexico border),  visual culture and archival thinking.
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Austin Schoenkopf

 

Austin Schoenkopf is a Ph.D. student studying the environmental history of the American West. Having earned his B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh and M.A. from the University of Oklahoma, Austin is interested in the multiple histories of land use in the West’s most marginal lands. Austin’s dissertation, tentatively titled “Hot, High, and Dry: Government in the Arid West,” will draw lessons from the historical limits of federal control in arid spaces to explain the polarization of rural politics and to outline alternative visions of federal land management for a precarious future. A former national park ranger and field archaeologist, Austin attempts to bridge intellectual divides between the disciplines of history, public history, and archaeology.  

Through a research grant with the Ivan Doig Center, where he currently serves as program director, Austin was the backcountry historian at Yellowstone National Park during summer 2021. Austin is a Mellon Applied History Fellow at CU-Boulder’s Center of the American West, Researcher-in-Residence at the Mojave Desert Heritage and Cultural Association, and the president of MSU’s History Graduate Student Association. 


Matthew Stump

Matthew Stump

 

Matthew is conducting research at various archives including the Nebraska Historical Society – Lincoln, Montana Historical Society – Helena, the Coos County Historical Society – Coos Bay, Or., and the Oregon Historical Society – Portland, Or. The result of this research will show the various ways in which money, trust, and debt were non-material technologies used during the Gilded Age American West to create a system (that still exists today) that favored White Anglo men, while excluding the ‘Other.’ Using inter-disciplinary techniques, secondary source work includes psychology, economics, anthropology, and statistics. Matthew’s dissertation is a biography of a railroad, mining, fishing/cannery, and timber baron named Elijah ‘The Profit’ Smith. 

Meeri With Her Dog

Meeri Kataja

 
Meeri is originally from Finland, and this will be her first time in Montana. While living in Hancock, Michigan for 5 months she developed interets in Finnish immigrants/Finnish Americans. Her research interest is Finnish immigrants in resource extractive areas in the U.S, and their relation to the environment.
Joseph Esparza on top of a mountain with an ice axe

Joseph Esparza

 

Joseph is interested in the intersection of  American environmental and intellectual history, as well as the history of mountains. He is researching the intellectual history and cultural meaning of the American mountain landscape. His M.A. Thesis, "Adams in the Garden: The Environmental Thought of John Adams," was a history of environmental thought in Early America and included a supplemental digital archive. His other interests include public history, geography, and the Catholic philosophy and theology of nature. In his free time he enjoys exploring the diverse landscapes of the American West as a mountaineer, peakbagger, hiker, and mountain biker.


Chris L'Heureux

Christopher L’Heureux

Chris comes from a military background where he had the opportunity to travel across the globe. His interests lie in how society and the environment shape the use of the military force in American foreign policy.