Curators

Maryanne Andrus | Mindy A. Besaw | Kurt Graham | Emma I. Hansen | David Kennedy | Charles R. Preston | Juti A. Winchester

Juti A. Winchester, Ph.D.

Ernest J. Goppert Curator of Western American History, Buffalo Bill Museum
Phone: 307.578.4050 Fax: 307.578.4076
jutiw@bbhc.org

Dr. Juti A. Winchester joined the staff of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center as Ernest J. Goppert Curator of Western American History for the Buffalo Bill Museum in 2002. In 1999, Winchester earned her Ph. D. in history from Northern Arizona University, where her concentrations included U.S. environmental history, race, gender, and ethnicity, the American West and Southwest, and archival theory and practice. Her dissertation, "All the West's a Stage: Buffalo Bill, Cody, and Western Heritage Presentation, 1846-1997," examines the life and work of William F. Cody against the background of authenticity, mediation, and heritage tourism studies. Later work on Lakota Wild West cast members brought Dr. Winchester to the Buffalo Bill Historical Center as a Garlow Research Grant recipient in 2000. She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees at San Diego State University.

Additionally, Dr. Winchester worked as an associate environmental planner in architectural history for the California Department of Transportation in Fresno. She has taught a variety of history classes at Northern Arizona University and Coconino Community College. Her teaching fields have included American history through film, Western civilization and American history surveys, and American Indian history. Dr. Winchester has also worked as the assistant archivist at the Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott, Arizona.

Dr. Winchester speaks and writes on a variety of Western American history topics. She is currently researching articles on W. F. Cody's business investments in Arizona, racial imagery in B-Western movies, the life and work of Western poet Sharlot M. Hall, and a revision of traditional and recent scholarship concerning Buffalo Bill's employment of Pine Ridge Lakotas in his Wild West shows. She is working on a revised version of her dissertation tentatively titled All the West's a Stage.

AREAS OF RESPONSIBILITY/EXPERTISE:

• William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody inquiries
• Buffalo Bill Museum
• Buffalo Bill's Wild West inquiries
• Cody area history
• Buffalo Bill and related artifacts of the West
• American Western history