Projects
Academic, creative, and public history projects.
School art collecting in Kansas began as a grassroots movement to bring original art to the state’s youth. Before 1950 schools in dozens of Kansas communities, including a boarding school for Indigenous students, joined the movement of acquiring art. The stories attached to these collections are varied: community exhibitions, bequests from the Carnegie Foundation, artwork distributed as part of New Deal arts programs, pieces created by students in Native American boarding schools, and more.
Humanities Kansas turns back the clock to 1972 with this multiple award-winning podcast series that commemorates HK's 50th anniversary in 2022. Episodes connect national events from 1972 to local events in Kansas. Through it all, we'll consider how and why Humanities Kansas got its start and its enduring importance. Winner of the AASLH Leadership in History Award.
“Early Indian Life in Kansas”
This Pony Express Museum digital exhibit documents and critically reinterprets a series of six dioramas depicting Native American cultural practices, originally created by the Kansas WPA’s Museum Extension Project in the 1930s and early 1940s. New interpretive text is developed in consultation with the Indigenous Nations featured in the dioramas. Funded by a grant from Humanities Kansas.
No Mountains in the Way: The Kansas Origins of 1970s NEA Documentary Photography
In 1974-1975, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEA) funded photographers James Enyeart, Terry Evans, and Larry Schwarm to document the buildings, people, and landscape of Kansas. This project, called “No Mountains in the Way,” was an attempt to re-capture the spirit of 1930s FSA photography for the 1970s. The success of the project helped inspire the NEA to create the Photographic Surveys Project (1976-1981), which ushered in a renaissance in regionally focused documentary photography.
An award-winning documentary film that explores Kansas history and identity during the Great Depression through conflict over post office murals created by New Deal arts programs. Created through my media production company, Clio’s Scroll Productions.
A Clio’s Scroll Productions podcast about the intersection of public health, cultural history, and war during the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic. “Pandemic on the Prairie” tells the stories of Kansas and Kansans during this tumultuous time of both a World War and a global pandemic and makes links to similar crises in present times.
An ongoing project that documents and analyzes the various arts and culture programs in Kansas funded by federal government agencies during the New Deal era, as well as Kansas artists who were involved in these programs. Includes a map of Kansas with New Deal artwork locations.
Invite me to speak to your group or organization about multiple topics in Kansas and regional history.
A map I compiled using James Loewen’s data on possible sundown towns in the United States and entries from the 1941 edition of the “Negro Motorist Green-Book”.
Searching for Virginia Rappe, “The Best Dressed Girl in Pictures”
IN PRE-PRODUCTION
What does it mean for someone to be famous for the way they died rather than the way they lived? Virginia Rappe is a name few recognize now, but her death was at the center of an early Hollywood scandal, the downfall of comedic star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. Instead of focusing on her death, this project seeks to reclaim the life of Virginia Rappe, including her career as a model and early fashion influencer. This project also explores what the life of Virginia Rappe, and how her death was handled by the media, can tell us about the intersection of gender, sexuality, celebrity, and fashion in the early 20th century.