Acknowledgments

Laura Gilpin first encountered the Indigenous societies of the American Southwest through the novels of Willa Cather—specifically, her romanticization of its colonization in Death Comes for the Archbishop, which Gilpin quoted in her own early book about the Pueblos. By the time Gilpin published The Enduring Navaho in 1968, her politics and her company had changed: she was appearing alongside the Kiowa novelist N. Scott Momaday, whose Pulitzer Prize–winning novel House Made of Dawn offers a complex and emphatically contemporary narrative of life in the American Southwest. Gilpin, too, had shifted from her early pictorialist vision (one that she regretted applying to Indigenous subjects) to a more sophisticated mode of representation.

When I first envisioned this book, I thought I might use Cather and Momaday as bookends to a discussion of Gilpin’s political journey. A studio visit with artist, designer, and photojournalist Jolene Nenibah Yazzie, known as Bean, changed my mind. I knew as soon as they described the Dilbaa Project (see chapter 5) that this book would have to look forward—and I am immensely grateful to Professor John Kinder and the Oklahoma State University American Studies program for the research grant that enabled Bean to begin creating the photographs and conducting the interviews for their series. That early conversation with Bean and their wife, Hannabah Blue, reinforced for me that Laura Gilpin’s lesbian identity was not an incidental fact; on the contrary, it informed every aspect of her lived experience and relationships with others. These twin insights—acting on Gilpin’s mandate to engage with contemporary people, and thinking through the related histories of lesbian and Indigenous politics—expanded my research practice and engendered this long list of acknowledgments.

There are not enough words in the world to describe the debt of gratitude I owe Bean and Hannabah. Their initial welcome, their patience with my shyness and lack of knowledge, Bean’s honest and open friendship when their January 2020 visit to my campus coincided with personal tragedy, and Hannabah’s generous advocacy of my research interests—in very real ways, this book owes much of its existence and insights to their support and to the sustained passion and brilliance of Bean’s work. For years before we met in person, I had been teaching my students about them in my course on Native American art and material culture. I often structured that course around contemporary artists whose work invites us to explore longer aesthetic and symbolic traditions, decolonizing histories, and current issues, and Bean’s work led us into fascinating conversations, some of which are echoed here. I am grateful to all the students at Oklahoma State University who explored and experimented with me over the twelve years I was on the faculty there. In the spring of 2020 I had the exceptional pleasure of bringing Bean in as a guest speaker for my graduate seminar on intersectional visual politics. Those students were my first formal audience for some of the ideas in chapter 5, as well as the theoretical frame for the book as a whole. Their questions and insights helped me articulate my ideas about intersectionality and the ethics at the core of my practice as a scholar. More recently, a grant from the University of Southampton has enabled Bean to return, after the disruption of a global pandemic, to the Dilbaa Project. This deeper engagement, after a multiyear hiatus and several life changes for Bean, holds significant promise for the future.

Like Bean, the artist Steven J. Yazzie was exceptionally generous with his time when I wrote to him, out of the blue, to say I wanted to write about his work. Indeed, many of the people I learned from over the course of my research have been gracious with their time and in discussing their work with me. The historian and genealogist Corey Smallcanyon, a descendant of Old Lady Long Salt (photographed by Gilpin in 1953; see chapter 2), spent hours with me on a Zoom call and several more trying to connect me with additional family members of those photographed by Gilpin. Members of Gilpin’s chosen family were open and excited about my research: I was intensely gratified by the enthusiastic welcome with which Jerry (Gerald) Richardson, Forster’s great-nephew, met my interest in Gilpin’s place in lesbian history; Sina Brush likewise spent hours with me, recalling her experiences with the photographer. In another way, Maida Tilchen is family, and after reading her fictionalized account of Laura and Betsy in Land Beyond Maps, I was thrilled to meet her through the Southwest Art History Conference. As a volunteer collaborator, Maida carefully read drafts of almost every chapter, providing thoughtful feedback, useful connections, and queer solidarity throughout my writing process.

Most American university–based academics do their research in summers, off salary and on their own time. For many years, I have spent part of every summer in my birth city, London, thanks entirely to the hospitality first of my grandmother and then for a decade that of my cousin Johanna Newhall. Johanna hosted me for six months while I was on sabbatical in 2017–18, a year during which I laid the strong foundations of this book. This decision to go home whenever possible, counterintuitive for a scholar of American visual culture, has paradoxically given rise to some of my most enduring collaborations and professional friendships; ultimately, it brought me back permanently. I am grateful to Joanne Prince, David Stirrup, Kate Rennard, Jacqueline Fear-Segal, David Peters-Corbett, David Herd, Jane Lovell, Sam Hitchmough, Monica Manolescu, Will Norman, Cara Rodway, Phil Hatfield, Amy Gillette, and the many other colleagues who have offered conversation, advice, speaking opportunities, early venues for writing about Laura Gilpin, and simple friendship over the years that I have worked on this book.

Home is a slippery concept. Early versions of parts of this book were presented at the Southwest Art History Conference, whose board I joined in 2016 and which meets in Taos, New Mexico, every October. Over the years, SWAHC has become one of my most beloved intellectual homes, and it has been a privilege to work with the board toward a more diverse and critically engaged study of the many visual histories of the American Southwest. Similarly, the History Writing Group at Oklahoma State was an intellectual refuge for me while I lived in Oklahoma: John Kinder, Yongtao Du, Sarah Foss, David Gray, Richard Boles, Emily Graham, and Doug Miller all helped shape the way I think and write about Gilpin, Indigenous history, and American politics. Individual conversations with friends and colleagues—notably, Hsuan Tsen, Farina King, Jennifer Nez Denetdale, Judith DeWitt, and Jonathan Walz—helped me clarify my research methods and theoretical argument throughout the book.

As is so often the case, individual connections led to institutional support, and I am grateful to have been awarded significant funding for this research. I began at the start of my sabbatical year in 2017 with an unforgettable month at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art thanks to a Davidson Family fellowship. The people at the Amon Carter are incredible and deserve mention by name: Sam Duncan, Jonathan Frembling, Rachel Panella, Marci Driggers, Devon Nowlin, Andrew Walker, Shirley Reece-Hughes, Helen Plummer, and Deanna Smith were all instrumental to the success of that early archival immersion. Over the past few years, as research turned into publication, Selena Capraro has been tirelessly responsive to my requests for images and permissions, and I am thankful for the generous institutional policy that has unfailingly supported my reproduction of Gilpin’s work.

The Oklahoma State University Research Office, Oklahoma Humanities, and the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library also supported my sabbatical that year, and I owe significant thanks to everyone in New Mexico and the Navajo Nation who helped guide me to archives and resources at that earliest stage of my research; Diana Bird, notably, welcomed me despite my inexperience as a scholar of Navajo history. Having the time and stability to focus intensively on research and writing at such a foundational moment in the project’s trajectory was vital. A monthlong residency at the Newberry Library in 2019 introduced me to new archival sources, thanks to the efforts of Rose Miron and Analú López, and gave me space to continue writing after my return from the UK. In 2019 I was also invited to participate in a conference at the Colorado Springs Art Center at Colorado College and to contribute an essay to the publication that resulted. I am delighted that some foundational research appears there for which there simply wasn’t room in this volume.

A summer grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities the following year helped me maintain momentum once I returned to teaching, although any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. That was also the first summer of the Covid-19 pandemic and the summer during which many institutions, including my own, finally recognized that Black Lives Matter; I enthusiastically spent part of that summer helping my colleagues review and revise curricula in response to that awakening. In 2021, in the middle of a pandemic-related lockdown in the UK, I returned to the Eccles Centre for six months thanks to an award from the U.S.–UK Fulbright Commission. Through a lively series of online programs and workshops, the Eccles Centre created a vibrant sense of scholarly community during those difficult months, and I cherished the balance of contemplative solitude and intellectual camaraderie that the fellowship offered.

All of those funding applications required individual support in turn: Tory Lightfoot, at Oklahoma State University, shepherded several of my major grant applications through arcane submission processes, and Traci Strah, then in the Department of Art, Graphic Design, and Art History at Oklahoma State, went above and beyond to help me with travel paperwork and other administrative tasks. Among my academic colleagues, Catherine Whitney, Betsy Fahlman, Rebecca Brienen, Christina Burke, and Jennifer Jane Marshall wrote letters of support for various applications, and several of them have written on my behalf for many years. I owe Jenn a particular debt of gratitude for introducing me to Pieter Martin, my editor at the University of Minnesota Press, whose immediate enthusiasm for the project deepened into careful guidance through the challenges of interdisciplinary peer review. Those peer reviewers—Kevin Bruyneel and Jennifer McLerran, along with those who chose to remain anonymous—offered powerful encouragement and thoughtful suggestions for development and revision. My first reader, my last reader, and my reader countless times in between is Jennifer Borland. We have been friends, colleagues, writing partners, collaborators, and travel buddies for more than two decades, and it is no exaggeration to say that all of my academic achievements owe something to her.