The Mellema Program in Western American Studies

The Mellema Program in Western American Studies invites applications for research assistance grants on any subject in its area of coverage, namely the North American continent west of the Mississippi River. This may include Western Canada, Alaska, the Mexican-American border region, and interaction with peoples and societies along the Pacific Rim. Awards for research/travel expenses typically will be in the amount of up to $3,500 in total, for research and travel expenses or library purchases. They are intended for well-defined research projects underway, not as startup grants for projects that are in the initial planning and defining stages.

The Mellema Program also is interested in promoting student scholarship. Applications that involve a student researcher can receive larger awards, to support payment for student work.

Although it is housed in the Historical Studies Department, the Mellema Program supports work in any relevant discipline or interdisciplinary domain—including but not limited to literature, geography, geology, popular culture, music, dance and the visual arts, political science, history, and religion. Any Calvin University faculty member is eligible for an award; preference will go towards those on a regular appointment. Proposals aimed at the completion of terminal degree requirements cannot be considered. Proposals should include a 2–3 page statement of purpose and method, a CV, a budget, and a schedule for completion of the project.

The Mellema Program invites applications for course-development grants. Grants are for the creation of a new course which focuses primarily on North American land, life, or experience west of the Mississippi River. This may include Western Canada, Alaska, and the Mexican- American borderland region. Such a course may be offered in a regular term or a summer intensive term and may come from within or across disciplines. Previous awards have gone to geology, history, literature, and religion. Preference will go to courses likely to be repeated on a regular basis. Proposals should include a statement of course objectives, methods and areas of study, a tentative syllabus or course outline, and a budget. Awards typically will be made in amounts up to $2,500 in total, for research and travel expenses and pedagogical and library materials.

In 1993, Dirk and JoAnn Mellema provided a generous donation to establish a Western American Studies Program (MPWAS) at Calvin University in the history department. The purpose of the MPWAS is to promote the study of the culture, land, and history of the Western U.S. The program promotes research and teaching related to the West as well as public lectures and cultural events that serve the larger Western Michigan and Calvin University communities.

The first phase of the program, organized by history department chair and acting director James Bratt, begin in 1995–1996. It included library enhancement, course development, and an inaugural conference.

Library enhancement began with the purchase of several hundred books, full runs of five scholarly journals, microform collections containing some 1,500 nineteenth century primary sources, and three video series related to the American West. Early course development grants funded courses in natural resources and westward expansion and Western American literature.

The inaugural Mellema Program conference was held in 1997 and included lectures by prominent historians of the American West as well as seminars for Calvin University alumni social science teachers working in Western states. The inaugural also familiarized the larger college community with the subject and promise of the new program. Developments in 1997–1998 expanded the program to include the Canadian West and Northern Mexico, providing MPWAS with a distinctive identity in the field and reflecting Calvin University’s historic Canadian connection.

In 1998–1999, Calvin University conducted a search for a permanent director who would promote Western American studies across the disciplines, an American cultural historian who could develop an ongoing program of research in the North American West and encourage Christian perspectives on Western American cultural studies. In February 1999, William Katerberg was hired to direct the MPWAS and teach in the History Department. He has been the director of Mellema since 2000.

MPWAS has continued to fund and host annual Mellema lectures; provide grants for research and course development by faculty in departments such as history, literature, religion, and geology; and purchase library materials, including significant microform collections of primary sources. Calvin University’s library now holds the largest collection of Western American studies material in Michigan. The Mellema Program also has helped to sponsor cultural events such as concerts, film series, readings by writers, and dance recitals.

2021

Jennifer Hoag, who teaches photography. She will be an artist in residence at Bloedel Reserve Creative Residents program on Bainbridge Island in Washington which is themed for those whose emphasis is on the connection of humans and nature. She will also spend time at galleries in Sante Fe, NM, and at the Center for Creative Photography and Etherton Photography Gallery.

Ralph Stearley, who teaches geology. The grant will support study of fossil fish remains recently discovered at a new site in south-central Oregon, near Christmas valley. The fossils are important for understanding ancestral drainage of the Pliocene era (5.333 million to 2.58 years ago) related to “Lake Idaho.” He will participate with a team of scholars doing field work in collecting and studying the fossils.

2019

William Katerberg (history). A project on Senator Henry L. Dawes, his daughter Anna Laurens Dawes, and Native American policy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The Mellema Program supported a research trip to the Library of Congress.

2018

Jamie Skillen (environmental studies). A project on violence on federally managed land in the American West—"This Land is My Land: Changing Conflicts in the American West.”

2017

Ralph Stearley (geology): A grant for research on “Fossil Evidence for the Historical Development of Western North American Salmonid Ecosystems” (Malheur County, Oregon). This project has received support on a small scale in recent years. This request is new in incorporating support for student research assistant. The grant will allow Prof. Stearley and a student to conduct research in in Oregon and Idaho. The student will present the research at the Michigan Academy of Sciences or another conference. 

Bruce Berglund (history): supporting a project on comparative study of the culture of hockey comparative study of the culture of hockey focusing on western Canada, Minnesota and nearby states, Sweden, and the Czech Republic.. A student researcher spent a week traveling back and forth to Lansing (the Library of Michigan) to do research on hockey in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan at the turn of the century.

2016

Kevin den Dulk (political science): Comparative analysis of water rights in the western United States, notably on agriculture and the meaning farmers attach to water rights. The grant will be used to fund trips to Utah and California to conduct interviews with farmers. This one included employing a student researcher.

Mark Mulder (sociology): A study of Robert Schuller and the Chrystal Cathedral in Southern California, focusing on religious innovation, its institutionalization, and its evolution. The grant will be used to fund two trips to California to do participant-observation research and interviews at Shepherd’s Grove and Christ Cathedral.

Fossil Evidence for the Historical Development of Western North American Salmonid Ecosystems

In 2013 and 2014, Ralph Stearley received a grant to continue his research. He traveled to Oregon and California to view salmonid fossils as part of his sabbatical project work. The goal of the larger project is to completely summarize the biogeographic history of Late Cenozoic salmonines from western North America. The implications of this extended ecosystem history, he emphasizes, should be applied to contemporary problems in anadromous salmonid stock management, particularly as-yet poorly understood relationships between oceanic migrations and the physics of the NE Pacific Ocean. Along with other grants, the Mellema Program grant allowed him to visit Rapid City, South Dakota, and the Boise, Idaho area. He was invited to examine fossil fishes from Neogene contexts in south-central Oregon, collected by South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SDSMT) teams and curated at the campus museum there in Rapid City.

Stearley also joined a group of scientists from the University of Michigan and College of Idaho to collect fossils in the region southwest of Boise, Idaho, and also south of Vale, Oregon. He also traveled to southern California, where the Los Angeles County Museum contains a substantial collection of fossil salmonids from nearshore deposits in southern California and from ancient marine incursions into what is now the Great Valley of California.

For the summer of 2010, the Mellema Program awarded Ralph Stearley of the Department of Geology, Geography, and Environmental Studies at Calvin University a grant of $2,400. This project is part of a larger ecosystem natural history study of fish fossils in the Western U.S. states.

Alaska Native Voices Tell the Masking Dance Story

Continuing past work, Ellen Van't Hoff's 2013 sabbatical project is a new documentary film on "Alaska Native Voices Tell the Masking Dance Story." It will document Alaska native Elders' memories of Nuuwikutaq, an Alutiiq New Year Masking Dance, in Sugt'stun, a Sugpiaq/Alutiiq dialect. The product will be a 20-30 minute archival documentary. The Nuuwikutaq is a tradition once performed throughout Alutiiq/Sugpiaq communities in Alaska. It is a Creole custom created from ancient Sugpiaq and Russian Orthodox ceremonies. Today, only the remote villages of Nanwalek and Port Graham still perform the annual celebration, which lasts for over four hours on the Julian calendar's New Year's Eve. In partnership with Sperry Ash, native son of Nanwalek, Van't Hof has been asked to create an archival film to preserve memories and images of Nuuwikutaq. Together they have identified 15 native-speaking Elders (representing 10% of the remaining Alutiiq-dialect speakers worldwide!) who have lifelong memories of Nuuwikutaq. They will record their stories in Sugt'stun before it's too late. This project is committed to discovering both the history and the contemporary cultural expression of the Nuutwikutaq Masking Dance of Nanwalek and Port Graham, AK.

Photography of Landscapes

The award to Jennifer Hoag is related to her 2013 sabbatical project of photography of landscapes, specifically of environments that appear to be contaminated. Two components of the project are set in West Michigan, but the third, for which Hoag will be receiving a Mellema Program research-travel grant, will be photographs of a series of sites in Washington, Oregon, and California.

"Some of the sites I will visit have been featured in famous modernist photographs," Hoag explains. "However, those photographs depict the land as an aesthetic object, untouched by humans. My photographs will challenge this interpretation of the landscape; question our assumptions about beauty, and our relationship with the land."

Ecosystem Management and the Crisis of Scientific and Political Authority

For the summer of 2011, Jamie Skillen of the Department of Geology, Geography, and Environmental Studies at Calvin University was awarded a grant of $1,500 for this book project under contract with the University Press of Kansas, scheduled to be completed in the fall of 2013. The award is related to the core case studies of the book in federal ecosystem management: the Northwest Forest Plan, covering federal lands on the west side of the Cascade Mountains in Washington, Oregon, and California, and the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project, covering federal lands in the Columbia River watershed east of the Cascade Mountains. The grant will allow Dr. Skillen to travel to offices in Oregon and interview federal employees/retirees and examine documents. The Mellema grant builds on funding provided by other college offices.

In 2012, Skillen received an additional grant for a student researcher to help him complete the project. The student, Bethany Van Kooten, one of the top geography majors, worked as research assistant on the project. In January and early February 2013 she analyzed several thousand pages of minutes and documents from eky federal committees that pertain to ecosystem management in the American West.

Reawakening the Alutiiq Arts

Professor Ellen Van’t Hof of the Health, Physical Education, Recreation, Dance and Sports (HPERDS) Department of Calvin University received two grants for her for a multimedia project on native traditions, dance, and the arts among the Alutiiq people of Alaska. The project involved cultural studies, working with both scholars and Native elders and performers, and the production of a documentary film entitled Finding Their Own Dance: Reawakening the Alutiiq Arts.

The film, produced by Rob Prince of the Communication Arts and Sciences program, was presented at Calvin in Fall 08 and is intended to help perpetuate, promote, and examine the heritage and contemporary artistic expression of this indigenous people. Van’t Hof and Prince showed the film in Alaska in Fall 08 and at documentary happy elderfestivals. This film has also generated interest in South America where indigenous groups are struggling with issues comparable to those of the Alutiiq. They currently are working on a French language version of the film, and they plan to show it later this year in France at a museum exhibition on Alutiiq dance and arts.

Big Sky Geology

In 2005, Professor Gerry Van Kooten of the department of Geology, Geography, and Environmental Studies received a grant to develop a May Interim course entitled, “Big Sky Geology: Montana Field Experience.” This introductory course was designed to be an immersion geology experience and fills the Physical World core requirement at Calvin. The department offers it each summer.

Restoring Puget Sound Prairie

Also in 2005, Professor Randy Van Dragt of the biology department was awarded a grant to begin a multi-year study on prairie restoration at the Puget Sound campus of Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies on Whidbey Island, Washington. The project is continuing via courses at the Au Sable Institute and Professor Van Dragt’s own restoration ecology course.

Theological Engagement with Frontier Cities

In 2004, the Mellema Program awarded Dr. James K.A. Smith for his sabbatical project, “The City of Angels as a Parody of the City of God: Theological Engagement with Frontier Cities.” The project used the field of philosophical theology known as Radical Orthodoxy to do social-cultural criticism of Los Angeles as a quintessential frontier city and now a postmodern city.

Disease, Habit, or the Story of a People

In 2003, Professor Glenn Weaver of the psychology department was awarded a development grant for an off-campus Interim course on “Addiction: Disease, Habit, or the Story of a People.” This program in New Mexico and Arizona focused on patterns of addiction historically and currently among Native Americans, Hispanic immigrant families, and Anglo teenage women.