The Dean L. May Graduate Fellowship
About the Dean L. May Graduate Fellowship
Gifts to the Dean L. May Graduate Fellowship in the History of Utah and the American West support some of our most promising MA and PhD students.
Meet Current and Past Recipients
The late Dean L. May was a beloved colleague and prolific scholar who taught several generations of students in American, U.S. West, and Utah history during his nearly thirty years at the University. In four books and more than 40 articles, he examined the Mormon experience in American history and highlighted Utah’s distinctive place within it. Among his books are City of God: Community and Cooperation Among the Mormons, Utah: A People’s History, and Three Frontiers: Family, Land, and Society in the American West. An editor of the Journal of Mormon History and president of the Mormon History Association, May also received the Distinguished Service Award from the Utah State Historical Society and was named a Pioneer of Progress in Historical and Cultural Arts for the state of Utah. He produced two documentaries about Utah, one of which is regularly aired on KUED.
Under the current terms, Dean L. May Fellowship in the History of Utah and the American West provides $17,000 per year plus tuition during their first two years of graduate study. In the first year, the fellowship includes no teaching obligations; in their second year, Fellows serve as Teaching Assistants in the Department.
The Department of History seeks to support the Dean May Fellowship in perpetuity. At present, the endowment has garnered support from more than ninety individuals and foundations. The Eccles family has been especially supportive. The George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation, the Marriner S. Eccles Foundation, and the Willard L. Eccles Charitable Foundation have together pledged more than $150,000 to support the fellowship. The interest of the Eccles family is both a dramatic illustration of their generosity to the University community and a fitting tribute to Dean, since Marriner S. Eccles' term of service as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board under Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one of Dean's earliest and most enduring scholarly interests.
To support the Dean L. May Graduate Fellowship or other endowments, please contact the Department Chair at (801) 585-0335 or visit the alumni donatations page and designate a contribution to this fellowship.
Current and Past May Fellows
Jaclyn Foster
(2018 - 2020)
Lori Wilkinson
(2017 - 2019)
Travis E. Ross, PhD 2017
Travis E. Ross (PhD, 2017) currently holds an appointment as a Lecturer in the Department of History at Yale University, where he teaches courses about the North American West. Titled “History, Inc.—Hubert Howe Bancroft’s History Company and the Problem of Selling the Past,” Ross’s dissertation won the department’s 2017 dissertation prize as well as the 2019 Phyllis Dain Library History Dissertation Award from the American Library Association. In his final year in the program, Ross worked for the Utah Division of State History as the project manager, research historian, lead author, and co-curator of Utah Drawn: An Exhibition of Rare Maps, which won the 2018 Autry Public Prize from the Western History Association.
Ross benefitted from generous support as a graduate student at the U, including the department’s Dean L. May Graduate Fellowship (2011–2013), a Floyd A. O’Neil Fellow at the American West Center (2012–2013), a Doctoral Research Fellow at the Tanner Humanities Center (2014–2015), and an Ellen Christina Steffensen Cannon Graduate Scholar (2015–2017). Anyone interested in contacting him can find his current CV and contact information at traviseross.com.
Jeff Turner
Jeff Turner has undergraduate degrees in Philosophy and Religious Studies from Washington State University, and a MA in Religion from Claremont Graduate University. He is a PhD student in U.S. History, and focuses on religious conversion and migration in the American West. He is currently working on a project that analyzes the Mormon response to 1920s U.S. immigration restriction policy. After completing the program, Jeff hopes to teach American History.
Jessica Young
Jessica Young graduated summa cum laude in 2014 with her Bachelor of Arts in History and a minor in Religious Studies from The Ohio State University. Jessica studies American religious history and gender in the nineteenth century. She focuses on questions of religion and identity formation, women in religion, religion as it creates lifestyles and communities, and religion’s influence on the lives of ordinary people. While utilizing the Dean L. May Fellowship she created two original research papers entitled “The Power of Words: Plural Wives’ Rhetoric About Polygamy During the Mormon Underground” and “The Mormon Underground and Its Challenges to Victorian Masculinity.” Thanks to the generous Dean L. May Fellowship Jessica will earn her Masters of Arts in History in 2016. She plans to pursue work in museums so she can share her passion for and knowledge of US religious history with the public.
