Meet the Mellon Fellows: Dr. Matthew L. O'Malley

Dr. Matthew L. O'Malley

Yale University
PhD, Anthropology and American Studies

Host Site: Great Basin Heritage Area Partnership
Fellowship Title: The Fallout of Fallout: Cold War Casualties in the Rural West
Project Description: From 1951 to 1962, 100 atmospheric nuclear tests were conducted in southern Nevada, blanketing the region north and east in radioactive fallout. Dr. O'Malley will conduct oral history interviews to research, document, contextualize, and interpret first-hand accounts from the era, painting a vivid picture of life in the fallout zone.

Bio:

Dr. O'Malley is trained as a cultural anthropologist, oral historian, and a humanistic scholar of American studies. He is an interdisciplinary scholar and researcher whose interests roam broadly: from American literature and art to human geography and place; African American Studies to narrative and storytelling. He is a student of placemaking, folklore, and cultural landscapes in the American West. While conducting oral and life history work in the Great Basin, he will also be working to finish a book on race, segregation, and spatial injustice in Buffalo, New York. The core of his work boils down to a preoccupation with enclosures, dispossession, and the commons.

Dr. O'Malley's training has included the Oral History Summer School, NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge, the Kerouac School of Poetics, the Living Culture Initiative at Ohio State University, and the New School's Institute for Critical Social Inquiry. He has taught extensively, curated, and completed archival and ethnographic research. He has lived and worked in California, Montana, Arizona, and Wyoming.

Tell us about your research interests!

I'm interested in war, the state, enclosure, place, storytelling, writing and history.

Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship Program

This project was made possible through the National Park Service by a grant from the National Park Foundation through generous support from the Mellon Foundation. The Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship program is administered through a partnership between NPS, NPF, and American Conservation Experience.