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Meet the Mellon Fellows: Dr. Stephen Hausmann

Dr. Stephen Hausmann

Temple University
PhD, History

Host Site: Mount Rushmore National Memorial
Fellowship Title: Exploring Impacts of Destination Tourism on Indigenous Artistic Expression
Project Description: Dr. Hausmann will trace the historic and ongoing impacts of destination tourism on Indigenous artistic expression. The project will investigate how traditional and modern Indigenous artforms incorporate and respond to the influence of tourism in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Bio:

Dr. Stephen Hausmann earned his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Vermont and his Ph.D. from Temple University. His areas of expertise include American history in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, environmental history, Native American history, and the history of the American West. His first book, under contract with the University of Nebraska Press, is tentatively titled Indian Country: An Environmental History of the Black Hills. This project examines the intersection between human culture and non-human environment in the Black Hills and broader American West through the histories of places like Mount Rushmore and events like the 1972 Rapid City Flood. Dr. Hausmann has previously served as assistant director and acting executive director for the American Society for Environmental History. When not teaching, reading, or writing history, he can be found rooting for his oft-beleaguered Boston Red Sox, playing any and all history-based video games, and spending as much time outside as possible.

Tell us about your research interests!

I'm interested in how the different ways people think, talk, and tell stories about environments shapes how people treat and relate to those environments. My research focuses on the Black Hills of South Dakota, a place rife (and fraught!) with means that are often quite a bit at odds with one another. I hope that through a clearer understanding of the past, people will come to a better understanding of the present as a means of building a more just future.

How does your research connect to the mission of the National Park Service, which serves both parks and communities?

My research is informed first and foremost by the conversations I've had, and continue to have, with people who live in the place I study. People care deeply about the Black Hills, and this land is sacred to many of those connected to this place. I take seriously my role as a historian as a storyteller committed to serving the community that I research and write about. Additionally, the National Park Service is both a democratic institution and an institution laden with colonial baggage. My research focuses on how people make sense of, and learn to live within, fraught and contradictory places and environments, like the Black Hills and Mount Rushmore, and indeed, like all the National Parks and NPS sites throughout the United States.

What are you most excited about as you begin your fellowship?

I can't wait to talk with people on the ground in the Black Hills and at Mount Rushmore about their relationships to this place, and what the region means to them. I hope that by understanding Indigenous arts in and about Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills, I'll have a more full and nuanced understanding of the place myself. To me, history is about people, first and foremost, so I'm especially excited about getting to know those who care about this place!