Intro

Photo of a white man in a brown plaid shirt standing at a podium and holding a microphone. He is staring at a screen that shows an image of an old-timey newspaper and text.

Ulysses (white man, short brown hair and beard, brown plaid shirt) speaking at a podium. Goodhue County History Center (Red Wing, Minnesota), June 2025.

Hello there!I'm Ulysses H. Swanson, an independent historian from New Brighton, Minnesota, USA.I assist GLAMs with research and outreach.I enjoy looking into the histories of food, gender, and sport in the Upper Midwest and Northern Plains.

Work

⌘ Lizzie Ehrenhalt's Romantic Sensation: The Queer Lives of Leon A. Belmont, 1853–1927—a book I helped fact-check—is coming out from UMN Press this October!

⌘ New entries I wrote for the Greater Minnesota Two-Spirit & LGBTQIA+ History Map digital exhibit (Minnesota Historical Society) will launch in late 2026/early 2027! Entries for another StoryMaps-based digital exhibit are also in the works.

⌘ Midwestern Queer History Bibliography—a list of works on queer and trans history situated within the borders of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin—is live.

⌘ I'm developing former undergrad projects (such as a poster comparing the histories of American casserole and Midwestern hot dish and a digital archive for a midcentury suburban racetrack) into book chapters and articles.

For more, visit my living CV on Google Docs.

Contact

email: [email protected]