DEPARTMENT NEWS & EVENTS

Please join us for the Public History Lecture Series, at 7 p.m., Wednesday, October 10, in Noble Hall 130. This year’s speaker is Bruce Noble. The title of his talk is "Public History and Management of Alaska’s Historic Chilkoot Trail." Prospectors trudging up an icy, snowy slope is the photo image on Alaskan license plates. The image is an historic photograph of the thousands of “stampeders” who headed north in search of Klondike gold and took the Chilkoot Trail to arrive on foot at Dawson City, Yukon Territory. Many would leave with broken dreams but others prospected for decades in Alaska’s Far North, America’s Last Frontier. Bruce Noble will explain the history of the trail and current National Park Service management issues and opportunities related to this historic corridor.

Former superintendent of Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park in Skagway, Alaska, Bruce Noble earned his master’s degree at the University of Wyoming and has worked for the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places. He has been chief of interpretation and cultural resources management at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, in West Virginia. Noble is currently Black Canyon National Park Superintendent here in Colorado.

FACULTY PUBLICATIONS & ACTIVITIES

New book from Michael Fry
Dr. Fry has been invited to prepare a second edition of his scholarly reference work, Historical Dictionary of Guatemala, which was first published earlier in 2018.  The first edition is a 413-page work with an extensive bibliography, and more than 700 cross-referenced entries on key personalities and on aspects of the country’s politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. It promises to be an incomparable resource in English for students, journalists, academic researchers, diplomats, and anyone wanting to know more about Guatemala.  The publisher Rowman & Littlefield, has published a variety of such dictionaries and second, and sometimes third editions.

Andrew Gulliford's article and books
In the August 11, 2018 edition of The Durango Herald, Dr. Gulliford contributed “Lessons of the 416 Fire show how our approach to wildfires has evolved.”

Also a reminder that Dr. Gulliford’s recently finished two books, The Last Stand of the Pack: Critical Edition, published by the University Press of Colorado, and The Woolly West: Colorado’s Hidden History of Sheepscapes, published by Texas A&M University Press.

In Fall 2018 he hopes to help sponsor a major wolf symposium on campus to discuss the past and future of wolves in Colorado. He also lead tours for History Colorado by canoe on the Gunnison River in August and by bus or coach into northwest Colorado. 

He’s also happy to help groups that come to Durango for downtown Durango walking tours and train trips to Silverton. Dr. Gulliford interprets history for weavers who come to the Center of Southwest Studies and then go on to weave with Navajos in Canyon de Chelley. Professor Gulliford continues to help students get internships and is always delighted to write letters of reference for history alumni headed for graduate school, law school, or other careers.

Paul Kuenker
Paul Kuenker has joined the Department as a visiting instructor teaching courses in U.S. history. He received his Ph.D. in History from Arizona State University in 2016 and spent two years teaching history at a Tucson elementary school before coming to Fort Lewis. His research focuses on American cultural history and the history of technology in the 19th century United States. While teaching, he is working toward the publication of his dissertation project, a cultural history of danger and disaster in the early decades of America's "transportation revolution," when steamboats and trains transformed American life. His study explores how experience with transportation's dangers reshaped American notions of technology, risk, death, and democracy in the modern world. Paul is originally from Colorado and is thrilled to be back working and teaching in the state.

Michael Martin
Greetings from your History Department Newsletter editor. While I am no longer the Chair of the History Department, I found that I apparently did not have enough to do so I was nominated and then elected President of the Faculty Senate here at Fort Lewis College. It has been quite an experience! There are a number of components to the position, one of which is I meet with the new President of Fort Lewis College once a month. President Tom Stritikus has brought a lot of new and great energy and excitement to FLC, and I have enjoyed very much working with him on the many projects he has developed to grow FLC in so many ways. I look forward to highlighting them in upcoming issues. We are still early in the process, but again, very exciting work. 

Also, last summer I worked on translating two short documents that help explore Benedictine monasticism and exegesis (biblical explanations). I also wrote a short introduction for each. They will be included in a new book coming out February 15, 2019: A Benedictine Reader: 530-1530. There are one dozen scholars contributing to this collection. As the Amazon.com description reads: "This Benedictine Reader: 530–1530, has been more than twenty years in the making. A collaboration of a dozen scholars, this project gives as broad and deep a sense of the reality of the first one thousand years of Benedictine monasticism as can be done in one volume, using primary sources in English translation. The texts included are drawn from many different genres and from several languages and areas of Europe. The introduction to each of the thirty-two chapters aims to situate each author and text and to make connections with other texts and studies within and outside the Reader. The general introduction summarizes the main ideas and practices that are present in the Rule of Saint Benedict and in the first thousand years of Benedictine monasticism while suggesting questions that a reader might bring to the texts."

I am also hoping to finally finish my book project this year. It is a Latin edition, with introduction, of an Irish Commentary on the Psalms written around 820 C.E. It is called Eclogae Tractatorum in Psalterium (Selections from treatises on the Psalms) which devotes itself primarily to emphasizing an historical interpretation of the Psalms. The author apparently was utilizing this approach for an everyday understanding for readers (and hearers) to provide them with guidance for proper religious behavior. He removes difficult theological arguments from the sources he borrows from and reworks them for more pragmatic understandings, and relevant to a broader audience.

DOCTORAL FELLOW

Patrick Troester
Originally from Pennsylvania, Patrick Troester is currently a Ph.D. candidate in American history at Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, Texas.  He is spending the 2018-2019 academic year here in Durango as the Doctoral Fellow in Southwestern History at the Center of Southwest Studies, and teaching U.S. History courses in the Department.  His research traces the cultural history of borderland violence in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands over the course of the 19th century.  By making a comparative study of the impacts and meanings of violence for the region's diverse societies, his dissertation project examines the evolution of state power and national identities during this period of dramatic change.

ALUMNI

Jessica Thulson (2016)
I graduated from Fort Lewis College in December 2016 with a degree in History for Secondary Education. In 2017 I was accepted for my first teaching job at Rifle Middle School in Rifle, Colorado. I taught 5th grade social studies. It was an amazing experience and I learned so much about teaching. I learned that it is an extremely rewarding job but also a very challenging one. 

I am currently teaching 5th grade reading, writing, and social studies at Cactus Valley Elementary School, in Silt, Colorado. I am living in New Castle, which is just 10 miles west of Glenwood Springs. I love my job, mostly because it is so fun teaching kids and having a fast paced, on your feet job. It requires a lot of time outside of school but FLC prepared me for the challenges that I would face in my career path. 

Some of my fondest memories that I have at FLC are the exceptional professors, the Honors Program, and playing golf for Fort Lewis. My favorite professors at FLC were Ellen Paul and Michael Martin. They were two people with a great sense of humor and they were always willing to help me with whatever I needed, even outside work, like helping me with my Honors Thesis. That helped me become a better teacher because I realized the impact that teachers can have when they show they truly care about your future. 

I loved being able to play golf at Fort Lewis College. I was hired this year to be the head high school women’s gold coach for Coal Ridge High School, so I am still getting to participate in the sport that I love. At FLC we traveled to California, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and around Colorado to play in beautiful places. My college professors were also always so supportive of my extracurricular activities.

Fort Lewis College helped prepare me for a career where I need to be a teacher, a psychologist, a nurse, a parent, and a coach all wrapped into one. Without my education at FLC, I would not be the teacher I am today or be as successful as I have been. I am so thankful that I chose a great school like Fort Lewis College, and I definitely miss my college days as a Skyhawk.

We would love to share more stories about our alumni. Please email me 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!

Email you alumni update information to Michael Martin at martin_m@fortlewis.edu.

For a complete current list, please visit www.fortlewis.edu/history/alumniupdates.
 

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