Profile

Nichelle Frank is a PhD candidate in the Department of History and a Gradutate Employee (teaching assistant) in the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Oregon. Her main interests are in history of the American West, particularly environmental history, architecture, and urban planning. These fields of inquiry shape her disseration, “Sanitizing History: Environmental Cleanup and Historic Preservation in U.S. West Mining Communities," which traces the histories of the environmental and historic preservation movements in Butte, Montana; Globe, Arizona; and Leadville, Colorado to understand how and why the two movements have overlapped as well as contradicted one another. This research demonstrates that the two movements have common interests at heart and have created healthier environments through collaboration and can provide inspiration for future environmental, public health, and history preservation policy revisions. 

Prior to her time at the UofO, Frank earned her Bachelor and Master's degrees from Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Her M.A. is in History with a Public History minor, and her B.A. is in History with an English minor. Her MA thesis, "Denver Goes to the Movies: Engaging National-Scale Identity Shifts from Movie House to Movie Palace, 1900-1940," argued that Denver movie theater architecture and placement within ethnically- and racially-defined neighborhoods was influenced by national trends, but also contributed to national trends in architecture, film, and identity. The thesis is accessible here: hdl.handle.net/10217/68010. A portion of Frank's thesis was published in Marquee and won the Jeffrey Weiss Award for Theatre History Writing. Frank's undergraduate honors thesis was on film history in Depression-era United States. 

Frank's work experience includes teaching U.S. Women's History at University of Oregon, teaching U.S. History and Colorado History at Arapahoe Community College in Colorado, writing an architectural history for the Astor House in Colorado, and conducting two internships with the Public Lands History Center (PLHC) in Fort Collins, Colorado (oral history project for Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument and creating a finding aid for the photography collection at Fort Collins Utilities). Her oral history project on Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument won the Rocky Mountain Cooperative Ecosystems Studies Unit Student Award. Frank has also been a volunteer reviewer for National Register Nomination forms with the Nevada State Historic Preservation Office as well as a volunteer preservationist with HistoriCorps.