History Department Advisor Active in Local History

In September of 2023, I was chosen by the Montana Historical Society to speak about my ongoing research at the 50th Annual Montana History Conference in Helena. In keeping the conference's theme, Building on the Past, I presented "Forgotten Souls: The Lost Voices of Western Montana's Restricted Districts" which looked at the sociocultural contributions regional red-light districts provided to frontier communities as well as the complex lives of African American residents from the districts in Helena, Missoula, and Hamilton. I was a member of the Hidden Side panel, alongside Western Heritage Center Executive Director Kevin Kooistra who spoke about minority communities in Billings at the turn of the century. 

While at the conference, I was also given the opportunity to start additional public history projects with Zachary Coe, Community Outreach Manager for the Foundation for Montana History, and Mark Johnson, author of The Middle Kingdom Under the Big Sky: A History of the Chinese Experience in Montana. In partnership with these historians, I am working towards improving cultural heritage opportunities in Missoula and the Bitterroot Valley as well as a different approach to interpreting the Big Sky's red-light citizens. 

The research I conducted about African American communities in the Bitterroot Valley will be published in an upcoming edition of Montana: The Magazine of Western History.

My public history work generated substantial interest at the conference, which has led to its adaptation in the form of a TED Talk which will be presented at the 2024 TEDxUMW conference this March in Dillon, MT. My TEDx Talk, "Lost Montana: The Path from Remembrance to Inclusive Heritage", will discuss the complexity of the Montanan identity as well as the importance of inclusive historical narratives at the local, state, and national levels. More information on my TEDx Talk can be found here: https://www.umwestern.edu/tedx-umw/.