Two English Department Students Win Grants from the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies

Students Bonnie Swenson and Millie Tullis have won grants for their research projects from the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies.

Bonnie Swenson is an undergraduate from Emery County, who was named the Outstanding Senior in English for Statewide campuses. Her project, “No One Died?: Uncovering the Voices of the Women of the Hole-in-the-Rock Expedition,” focuses on the women and girls who traveled in the arduous journey to establish a road to southeastern Utah in spite of 2000-foot descents. Bonnie has presented her research at the 2022 Research on Capitol Hill event and the Utah Conference on Undergraduate Research (UCUR). The grant will fund additional travel to perform archival research to uncover women’s writing on the subject.

Master’s student Millie Tullis (pictured above), is a poet and folklorist. She won the Annaley Naegle Redd Student Award in Women’s History for her project “The Legacy of Utah Peepstone Women in Family Histories.” Her project focuses on two Mormon peepstone women in late 19-century Utah. Her project examines how the once popular practice of using peepstones for revelation shifted outside of orthodox practice, particularly for Mormon women, during this time period. Millie’s research around this topic has been presented at the D Michael Quinn Conference, the Western States Folklore Society Conference, as well as the Mormon History Association Conference. The grant will support Millie’s travel to perform archival research and conduct oral histories.

The Charles Redd Center provides awards, fellowships, and grants in a variety of categories and disciplines. Priority is given to projects that use the North American West as an essential part of framing, theory, or analysis, as opposed to those for which “western” locales are simply incidental to project parameters or purposes. Additionally, some categories narrow focus to projects on the “Intermountain West,” defined as the interior-facing or intermountain regions of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. Some award categories are restricted to BYU faculty or students, but the others are open to all applicants.