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Immigration Rights and Resources for the Campus Community

Since graduating from HSU, I earned a Master of Arts in 1994 and a Ph.D. in 2008 from the Department of History at the University of Memphis in Tennessee, as well as Master of Arts degree with a major in Archives Administration from the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin - Madison in 2003.

Stemming from volunteer work I did in relation to my dissertation, the Wisconsin Historical Society employed me as an Archives Assistant from 1998 to 2000, and then as a Project Archivist from 2000 to 2004. In 2003-2004, I worked as a project archivist at the Merrill G. Burlingame Special Collections at Montana State University - Bozeman.

In fall 2004, I began my tenure as an archivist at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, where I specialize in photographic collections, as well as manuscript collections principally based in the Trans-Mississippi West. In this work, I have processed several collections related to northern California and Humboldt County. This includes the Peter Palmquist Collection of Humboldt County, California, Male Photographers and the Peter Palmquist Collection of Women in Photography .

Since 2007, I have taught courses in United States History and the history of photography at Quinnipiac University.

In October 2011, Wisconsin Historical Society Press published People of the Big Voice: Photographs of Ho-Chunk Families by Charles Van Schaick, 1879-1942, by me, as well as my co-authors, Tom Jones, Michael Schmudlach, Amy Lonetree, and George A. Greendeer. The work provides a visual history of Ho-Chunk families in Wisconsin. More on the work is available at

My contribution to People of the Big Voice provides a biographical essay that draws from my dissertation completed in the Department of History at the University of Memphis in 2008. The essay briefly relates highlights from the professional life of Charles J. Van Schaick (1852-1946), a professional photographer in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, and outlines the stewardship of his photographic collection by the Jackson County Historical Society in Black River Falls and the Wisconsin Historical Society. It also discusses the different photographic formats used by Van Schaick to market portraits to his Ho-Chunk clients and identifies several of his contemporaries who also captured images of Native Americans in Wisconsin and throughout North America. It concludes with a discussion of the portrait photography and the meanings a viewer may derive from these images as documents of the past

The People of the Big Voice recently won the 2011 USA National Best Book Awards in the category of Photography: People

Alumni Grad Year
1993
Alumni Major