Current History Graduate Students
M.A. Students
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
Katie Montana
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.
Travis Carioscia
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 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 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
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.
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
Katie McLain
Jacob Northcutt
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.
LaTrelle Scherffius
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 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 Kataja
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.
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.