Colorado State University Associate Professor of History Michael Childers has been named one of 31 National Humanities Center Fellows for the 2024-2025 academic year.
“Receiving this fellowship is so humbling, but at the same time it really affirms all the hard work that I’ve put into this project for more than a decade,” said Childers, who will be at the Center for the Fall 2024 semester working on his book, “The Mountains are Calling: Tourists and the Unmaking of Yosemite National Park.” The book examines the park’s history through visitors’ own experiences, as well as the environmental costs of tourism.
Childers, who specializes in the modern American West and the environment, is also the author of “Colorado Powder Keg: Ski Resorts and the Environmental Movement,” which looked at the history of Colorado’s ski industry and the emergence of the postindustrial West, where mountains became more valuable as ski resorts than as rangelands.
Chosen from 500 applicants, the newly appointed fellows come from universities and colleges in 16 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, as well as Canada, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom. The fellowship grants enable selected scholars to take leave from their normal academic duties to pursue an individual research project at the Center, as well as share ideas in seminars, lectures and conferences.
“This fellowship will give me the time to finish writing this project, which has been in the works for so long,” Childers said. “But it will also put me into a space where I’ll meet and talk with people from many different backgrounds who can help me flesh out things in ways that I wouldn’t have had access to before.”
The 2024-25 class of fellows represent humanistic scholarship in a variety of areas, including African American studies; anthropology; Chicana/o studies; disability studies; East Asian studies; gender and sexuality studies; history; indigenous studies; studies of languages and literature; Latinx studies; music history and musicology; philosophy; and religious studies.
“Scholars in the Humanities are critical to our understanding of the past and the present, and Professor Childers is no exception,” said Elissa Braunstein, interim dean for the College of Liberal Arts and associate dean for research and graduate programs. “His scholarly work related to the environment, to Colorado ski towns, and to the American West broadly helps us to better understand the human impact on the environment and vice versa. We’re proud of his selection as a Fellow and look forward to reading the work he produces.”
The National Humanities Center awarded $1,500,000 in fellowship grants for the 2024-25 class. Funding is provided from the Center’s endowment and by grants and awards from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the Henry Luce Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as contributions from alumni and friends of the Center.
About the National Humanities Center
The National Humanities Center is the world’s only independent institute dedicated exclusively to advanced study in all areas of the humanities. Through its residential fellowship program, the Center provides scholars with the resources necessary to generate new knowledge and to further understanding of all forms of cultural expression, social interaction and human thought. Through its education programs, the Center strengthens teaching on the collegiate and pre-collegiate levels. Through public engagement intimately linked to its scholarly and educational programs, the Center promotes understanding of the humanities and advocates for their foundational role in a democratic society.
