Scholarship & Research
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Item Humans and howls: wolves and the future of animal communication(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2021) Narotzky, Emma May; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Mark FiegeWolf howls have seldom been subjected to studies focusing on their semantic content, especially in wild populations where the context is natural but the availability of contextual clues for researchers is limited. The meaning of wolf howls as interpreted by humans depends on the human's position in ecological, cultural, and scientific context. I describe human interpretations of wolf howling from the perspective of amateur observers, historians, and biologists; the historical context of wolf howl research within ethology and questions about semantics in animal communication research; and the possibility of semantic differences in wolf howls from different contexts recorded in the wild. Wolf howls were recorded in Yellowstone National Park in 2017 and howls from territorial borders were compared with howls from territory interiors. Howls from the two groups were not discriminable. There may be no structural differences containing semantic information about territorial content, or the location relative to a border may not be a useful proxy for territorial message. Questions about intended meaning as opposed to observed function in animal communication are difficult to answer and often collide with humans' desire to be unique in their communication systems. Questions about wolves run into political and cultural baggage arising from humans' and wolves' history as ecological competitors. As semantic research in animal communication develops, wolves may become a coveted subject species because of their social living, strong individual/personal characters, and group coordination. These studies and their results will always be filtered through a thick barrier of human biases and reflections--possibly more so than any other non-primate in the world--but information about wolf communication can be disentangled from human culture in both scientific and vernacular accounts with enough historical information about the sources of the humans' biases. Future research on this topic will require simultaneous approaches from different angles, including ethological, historical, neurological, perceptual, and socioecological.Item American fantasies and imagined histories: ethnic play and settler colonialism in twentieth-century Wyoming(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2021) Powers, Andrea Shawn; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Susan KollinAmerican Fantasies and Imagined Histories examines three case studies unified through ethnic play, the interrelated structures of settler colonialism and white supremacy, geographical location, and time period. This project employs an interdisplinary approach that combines original archival historical research, and literary and cultural analysis while drawing on Indigenous and Black frameworks. In twentieth-century Wyoming, redface and blackface filled Native and Black cultural absences maintaining the structures of settler colonialism and white supremacy. At the same time, this dissertation examines settler colonialism, slavery, and white supremacy in relation to the experiences of Black and Native peoples. This study shows how ethnic play both maintains and disrupts the race and gender hierarchies created by the interrelated structures of settler colonialism and white supremacy.Item Mary Meigs Atwater: the many lives of an American new woman(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2020) Biehl, Mary Ann; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Walter Fleming and Robert Rydell (co-chair)This dissertation explores the various parts of one woman's life, chronologically but also thematically. Mary Meigs Atwater, known among a group of artisans as the Dean of American Hand-Weaving, was a New Woman, born in 1878 in a time when Victorian American ideals of the Cult of Domesticity dominated society's conscripted gender roles. However, throughout her life, she proved herself to be a pioneer in many fields, regardless of societal norms. Through study and utilization of primary documents -- letters and memoirs serving as the dominant sources -- I have divided this dissertation, and her life, into six chapters: 'The Six Little Meigs Girls (1878-1893)', 'The Fin de Siecle Artist (1894-1902)', 'The Mining Engineer's Wife (1903- 1916)', 'The Weaver Emerges (1916-1922)', 'The Pioneering Businesswoman (1923-1947)', and 'The Dean of American Hand-Weaving (1947-1956)'. Throughout the dissertation are the stories of Mary's five sisters, who also led extraordinary lives. The three takeaways from this dissertation are: 1) Mary Meigs Atwater was more than just a weaving pioneer -- she was a pioneer in every occupation and task she pursued; 2) the symmetries between events of the past and present are incredibly evident through analysis; and 3) just as Mary Meigs Atwater resurrected weaving during a time of machine-made textiles, humans of the 21st century must continue to create beauty with their hands as technology advances and the Artificial Intelligence automation of professions threatens to make the Humanities obsolete.Item The Montana modernists: redefining Western art(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2019) Corriel, Michele; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Mary MurphyThrough an investigation of twentieth-century Montana postwar societal aspects, I examine the emergence of an avant-garde art movement in the state. The pioneers of this movement, Jessie Wilber, Frances Senska, Bill Stockton, Isabelle Johnson, Robert DeWeese, and Gennie DeWeese, nurtured, sustained, and promulgated an aesthetic philosophy that redefined Western art in Montana. Divided into three sections, the exploration of this avant-garde movement concentrates on place, teaching/artistic lineage, and community. Part one examines place. For some, place refers to the physical attributes of Montana in the postwar years, the isolation, the beauty, and the complexity of its landscape that not only served as a backdrop but also played center stage in the influences on life and art. For others in the group, place became a metaphor for the body politic, a personal evocation of space held within the boundaries of time. Part two charts each artist's artistic lineage to further understand how they arrived at their particular artistic styles. Community, the third section, seeks to answer one of the larger questions within this work: how did six artists working in Montana in the late 1940s create a thriving art community that opposed the meta-narrative of the West and still resonates in contemporary Montana art. A thorough study of their teaching styles, art techniques, and social gatherings demonstrates the workings of a tight-knit community of like-minded artists (and writers, dancers, musicians, and philosophers) as they addressed the changing zeitgeist of a postwar America, cultivating fresh ideas through a modern lens, allowing Montanans a new option for viewing themselves.Item Locating the transgender other: alterity in 21st century America(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2018) Medicine Horse, Cassidy Anne; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Matthew HermanDiscussions directed toward amending past stigmatizations associated with transgender identity have expanded in the 21st-century. Contemporary debates concerning the sociocultural pariah of mid-20th-century America have swung wide the doors of denounced identity. As this has happened, a more extensive text has emerged concerning the notion of alterity. Designators of non-binary gender expanded during the middle of the last century and grew to include ideas of anti-nationalism, civil disruption, and sexual perversion. A plethora of politically motivated social agendas resulted in scholarship that did not keep up with contemporary realities. Perpetrated distortions of the 'trans-other' have disaffiliated more than 1.5 million American citizens. Dramatic increases in 'hate crimes' and a striking disparity in transgender suicide rates present a worrisome illustration of trans-alterity. This treatise centers on how the location of transgender Story has shifted and revealed new ways of discussing gender distinctiveness. There is an opportunity for a scholarship to develop that incorporates the history of trans-exclusion with contemporary advances in technology. Stories of the trans-subject are instantly communicated, and knowledge of the past acts to eliminate transgender alterity. The art of telling stories is an underutilized tool of scholarship. Trans-emergence is a story about contemporary reality and recording knowledge about the history of a marginalized culture. By looking back, it is possible to see a future that does not merely re-theorize or restate a call for inclusion but informs scholars that society is experiencing a 'Transgender Renaissance.'Item Predilection, progress and prejudice: coon songs and the construction of race in nineteenth century American culture(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2019) Matzinger, Ryan Joseph; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Robert Rydell; Billy Smith (co-chair)This is a study about the history of American culture and the construction of race through the musical idiom of coon songs. It is an examination of the jazz narrative and the role of blackface minstrelsy and coon songs, as they directly relate to the jazz tradition and the construction of race in nineteenth-century America. The modes of inquiry utilized are from the American Studies methodology and resulted in a more thorough, in-depth understanding of the construction of American race ideology, with a more complete, holistic perception of the jazz narrative. In a methodology that blends the excavation of less standard resources and research techniques that approach American history from further outside the chronological strictures and modes of conventional historical inquiry, the American Studies jazz-scholar-musician is compelled to live by, creatively inquire about, and more thoroughly comprehend the rationally intuitive values of jazz music and cultural literacy. In this study of race construction, coon songs, and the American jazz narrative as regarded from a revised conventional modality of jazz as American Studies, and American Studies as jazz, what's really on the line is the way American culture cultivates and also demolishes social and racial hierarchies through musical idioms.