Dr. Bsumek is the Ellen Clark Temple Chair in Women's History. She has written on Native American history, environmental history/studies, the history of the built environment, and the history of the U.S. West. She is the author of the award-winning, Indian-made: Navajo Culture in the Marketplace, 1848-1960 (University Press of Kansas, 2008) and the coeditor of a collection of essays on global environmental history titled Nation States and the Global Environment: New Approaches to International Environmental History (Oxford University Press, 2013). Her current research explores the social and environmental history of the area surrounding Glen Canyon on the Utah/Arizona border from the 1840s to the present. The title of her latest book with the University of Texas Press is The Foundations of Glen Canyon Dam: Infrastructures of Dispossession on the Colorado Plateau (2023). She is also working on a larger project that examines the impact that large construction projects (dams, highways, cities, and suburbs) had on the American West which is tentatively titled "The Concrete West: Engineering Society and Culture in the Arid West, 1900-1970" and a biography of a Navajo woman who was enslaved by the Utes, sold to LDS settlers, and then who became a well-known figure in the region tentatively titled “Unsettling Narratives: Rose Daniels, Indentured Servitude, and the Creation of an American Symbol.”

Dr. Bsumek has written op-eds for publications such as Time, the Austin American Statesman, Huffington Post, Al Jazeera America, and the Pacific Standard. She has been a Provost's Teaching Fellow and has been named a UT-Austin Academy of Distinguished Teacher and a
UT System Regents Distinguished Teaching Professor.

She is also the creator of a digital timeline and network mapping software platform called ClioVis, which enables students and researchers to create time-aligned network maps of their class/research projects. The platform has served over 28,000 students. She is also the lead scholar on the Radical Hope Syllabus Project and the coordinator of the website.

Courses Taught

Native American history, history of the U.S. West, Environmental history, The Land Before Us (UGS), Building America, and other courses.

Select Publications
The Foundations of Glen Canyon Dam: Infrastructures of Dispossession on the Colorado Plateau, University of Texas Press in 2023.
Indian-made: Navajo Culture in the Marketplace, 1880-1940, explores the intersection of consumerism and ethnic identity construction.
Co-editor, Nation States and the Global Environment: New Approaches to Environmental History (Oxford University Press, 2013).

Creator: Radical Hope Syllabus, a public-facing scholarly resource on environmental history and climate change; ClioVis: Digital Timeline and Network Mapping Software.

Awards and Other Credentials

UT System Academy of Distinguished Teachers, 2024
Best Indigenous Studies Award for Foundations of Glen Canyon Dam Awarded by Mormon History Association, 2024.
UT-Austin Academy of Distinguished Teachers, 2020
UT Executive Management Leadership Program Certificate, 2019
Regent's Outstanding Teaching Award, 2018
President's Associates Teaching Excellence Award, 2017
Provost's Teaching Fellow, 2016-2019
Dads' Association Centennial Teaching Fellowship, 2014
New Mexico Book Award, 2010, for Indian-made: Navajo Culture in the Marketplace, 1880-1940
Ralph Emerson Twitchell Award, 2009, New Mexico Historical Society for Indian-made: Navajo Culture in the Marketplace, 1880-1940