Contributors

Dr. Emily C. Burns is Director of the Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of Art of the American West at the University of Oklahoma, which supports the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge about the art of the western United States. She earned a BA from Union College, an MA from George Washington University, and a PhD in art history and archaeology from Washington University in St. Louis. She is author of numerous publications, including Transnational Frontiers: The American West in France (2018), and is a co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Art and the Formation of Empire (2025) and The Routledge Companion to Art and Challenges to Empire (2025).

Dr. Annika K. Johnson is the inaugural Stacy and Bruce Simon Curator of Native American Art at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska, where she develops exhibitions and research initiatives in collaboration with Indigenous communities. She earned her PhD in art history from the University of Pittsburgh. Her curatorial projects include Faces from the Interior: The North American Portraits of Karl Bodmer (2021), Dripping Earth: Cannupa Hanska Luger (2025), and The Growing Thunder Collective (2027).

Dr. Melanie McKay-Cody (Cherokee, Shawnee, Powhatan, and Montauk descendant) is Assistant Professor in the Department of Disability and Psychoeducational Studies, as well as a courtesy professor in the Department of Linguistics, at the University of Arizona, where she studies critically endangered Indigenous Sign Languages in North America. A Cherokee Deaf, she studied art history at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC, earned twin MAs from the University of Kansas and the University of Arizona, and a PhD from the University of Oklahoma. She is one of the world’s leading researchers on North American Indian Sign Language and is a founder of Turtle Island Hand Talk, a group focused on Indigenous Deaf, Hard of Hearing, DeafBlind, and Hearing people.

Ian Sampson is a cartoonist, printmaker, and interdisciplinary educator who earned a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and an MFA from the University of Delaware. In addition to his illustrative work, which focuses on nonfiction comics in the fields of graphic medicine and American history, he teaches college in and around Philadelphia, where he lives with his family. His work has appeared in publications including the Annals of Internal Medicine, the Society of Illustrators Comic and Cartoon Art Annual, and Makeout Creek.

Dr. Spencer Wigmore is the Patrick and Aimee Butler Associate Curator of American Paintings at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia). He studied art history at Carleton College, later earning his PhD from the University of Delaware. Prior to his appointment at Mia, Wigmore was Curator of Fine Art at the Minnesota Historical Society, and before that he was Associate Curator of Paintings, Sculpture, and Works on Paper at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas, where he assisted with a pivotal reinstallation of the Carter’s permanent collection and curated numerous exhibitions. He is a co-author of the Carter Handbook (2023).

Dr. Michael Wise is Professor of History at the University of North Texas and an environmental historian of the North American West. He studied history at Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA, and Montana State University in Bozeman before earning his PhD from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. He is the author of Producing Predators: Wolves, Work, and Conquest in the Northern Rockies (2016) as well as many articles and essays on food, agriculture, and animal-human relationships.