On April 1, the Public History Program host our H. Duane Hampton Lecture, honoring the late H.D. Hampton (“Hamp”), Hammond Professor Emeritus of the University of Montana History Department. The event will feature award-winning writer and historian Megan Kate Nelson delivering the public lecture “How the Real West Was Lost: The Frontier Myth and the Erasure of U.S. Western History.” Join us from 7-8:30pm at the Gallagher Business Building, room 106.
News
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H. Duane Hampton Lecture: Megan Kate Nelson
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Women Prison History Exhibit
Public history student Rebecca Maine has co-authored a new digital exhibit for the Montana History Portal that explores the history and experience of female inmates living in a Montana prison system designed for men. Check it out here: “Built Without Her In Mind.“
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Meet Gus!
Public history student Rebecca Maine recently completed an internship with the Montana History Portal, where she created a digital exhibit on Gus: “The Largest Western Larch Tree in the World“!
Located near Seeley Lake, Montana Gus has stood through centuries of change, from Indigenous stewardship to the rise of the timber industry and modern conservation efforts. Rebecca’s exhibit explores how one remarkable tree connects Montana’s environmental and cultural history.
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Yukio Shimomura talk
Please join us Thursday, October 23 at 7pm for a presentation by Yukio Shimomura, who will share his family’s powerful story of incarceration in War Relocation Authority camps during World War II. This event is co-sponsored by the UM History Department and the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula. Social Sciences Building room 356.
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Historic Campus Walking Tour
This month, the Unseen Missoula program is offering several historical tours of UM Campus. Students from our public history program and classes developed this tour, which incorporates Native American history, architectural history, campus protests, underground tunnels and skydiving, among other things! The tour on September 19th (Parents Weekend) is FREE! You can get tickets here.
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Crossings Exhibit
Check out the amazing traveling “Crossings” exhibit, developed by a UM alum in collaboration with the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula, which covers 200 years of gender and sexual diversity in Montana. UM public history interns will be docent for the exhibit at the historical museum this summer. The exhibit will then be up in the UM Mansfield Library through the end of October 2025.
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Sam Jackson wins library scholarship
Public history student Sam Jackson, who has been doing a public history internship for the past year with the Mansfield Library Archives and Special Collections, won the H. William Gabriel Library Scholarship for commitment and care in facilitating an accessible and welcoming environment for all library users. Congratulations, Sam!
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Wet Missoula Oral Histories online
Kyle Volk’s class’s “Wet Missoula” oral histories are now fully available online. Explore the oral histories more here and read about the project here.
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History Department sponsors NAI conference
The National Association for Interpretation Heartland Region is holding its 2025 conference, Stories on the Landscape, in Missoula, Montana, this week. The event brings together professional interpreters from across the region to explore cultural and natural interpretation. The UM Public History Program is a proud sponsor of this amazing event, which is hosted by one of our great partners: the Montana Natural History Center.
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Zine Exhibit at Mansfield
What is a zine? For his Mansfield Library Archives internship, Sam Jackson developed an exhibit that explores the evolution of these intriguing do-it-yourself publications. Come check out the display in the library that shows off the diversity of zines from the archive’s collection.
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Queer In and Out project featured in Daily Montana
Queer In and Out, a collaborative project involving UM history students and faculty, has been featured in the Daily Montanan.
History graduate Charley Macorn. Credit: Keila Szpaller/Daily Montanan.
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H. Duane Hampton
This month, H. Duane Hampton, Emeritus Professor in the History Department and the namesake of our Public History Program, passed away. In addition to being a scholar and teacher, Hampton was a prominent part of Missoula’s community and a profoundly influential mentor to many young historians, particularly those working in public history. “Hamp,” as he was known affectionately by his multitude of friends, was a wonderful person who lived a full life. We are so honored to have a public history program named after him.
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Cooney hired at museum
Congratulations to Torrie Cooney who was recently hired as the Assistant Education Director for at the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula! Cooney received her public history certificate from UM in 2023 and completed several public history internships with the museum while she was a student. We’re so excited for her!
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Op-ed writing workshop
Graduate and undergraduate students joined Leif Fredrickson, Anya Jabour and Jeff Wiltse for a discussion of how history scholars (including students!) can translate their research into writing for the public, and how learning to write for the public can improve scholarly writing.
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Students present at NCPH
In April, three of our graduate students attended the National Council on Public History (NCPH) annual conference in Salt Lake City. In addition to attending talks on topics ranging from archives and collective memory to interstate visitor centers and re-interpreting state historical sites, our students presented an exhibit they completed with their classmates in Dr. Zimmer’s Exhibit Design and Development class last semester.
Graduates students Dylan Yonce, Hazel Videon, and Cassidy Vandervoort showing off their pop-up exhibit at the NCPH conference. In addition to showing off the exhibit they created, the students engaged NCPH attendees with questions about how to handle sensitive stories and diverse interest groups when developing exhibits.
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Student documentary premieres
For two years, graduate student Dylan Yonce has been collaborating with others on a documentary, The Bodies Beneath Us, about two forgotten cemeteries in Missoula’s Rattlesnake neighborhood. The documentary will premier at the Roxy Theater May 6 & 13th at 7:30 PM. Get tickets here and read more about this awesome documentary here.
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$200k anonymous gift
An anonymous alum has donated $200,000 to our H. Duane Hampton Public History Program! To read more about this very generous donation and what it means for the public history program, check out this UM news story.
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Fredrickson on C-SPAN
C-SPAN came to UM to record Leif Fredrickson’s lecture on the “Missoula Free Speech Fight of 1909” as part of C-SPAN’s “Lectures in History” series.
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Blue Death broadcast
Several UM public history interns worked on Dee Garceau’s documentary Blue Death: The 1918 Influenza in Montana. The film will be broadcast on Montana PBS, Thursday, March 28 at 7pm, as well as March 31 at 10 am and April 1 at 2am.
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Haney to be Humanities Montana presenter
Former UM public history student Austin Haney has been selected as a presenter for Humanities Montana. Congratulations, Austin!
