Assistant Professor of History Amy Kohout has been awarded a David J. Weber Fellowship for the Study of Southwestern America at the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University.

This prestigious award will allow her to complete work on her first book, tentatively titled "Taking the Field: Soldiers, Nature, and Empire on American Frontiers." The book explores the intersection of ideas about nature and empire through an examination of the experiences of American soldiers in the U.S. West and the Philippines in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

"This is an incredible opportunity to focus on my book project, and to discuss it with leading scholars in my field," says Kohout. "I'm delighted to join the Clements Center community, and I'm grateful to CC for supporting me to pursue this fellowship during the 2020-21 academic year."

Kohout joined the History Department at Colorado College in the fall of 2016. She works on American cultural and environmental history, and her research and teaching interests include the U.S. West, the history of natural history, American empire, museum studies, world's fairs, and the history of technology.

Kohout's work has been published in the Museum History Journal, Rethinking History, The Appendix, Sustainability Science, and in "A Companion to the History of American Science." She is a co-founder of Backlist, a digital site where historians recommend books they love, and before that she served as an editor at The Appendix, a journal of narrative and experimental history.

The Clements Center hosts a small cohort of fellows each academic year and organizes manuscript workshops for each fellow's project. Kohout's book is under contract with the University of Nebraska Press and slated for inclusion in its new Many Wests series.