The Department of History (LA&PS) is delighted to welcome Dr. Boyd Cothran (B.A., University of California at Berkeley; M.A., University of Minnesota; Ph.D., University of Minnesota, 2012), currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in International Studies at Macalester College, to a tenure‐stream position in United States History at the rank of Assistant Professor, effective July 1, 2012.
Boyd Cothran is a 19th-century United States historian whose primary interests are in cultural studies and comparative indigenous studies. His recently completed interdisciplinary dissertation titled Marketplaces of Remembering: Violence, Colonialism, and American Innocence in the Making of the Modoc War examines the history of violence between the U.S. and indigenous peoples in the American West. Investigating how indigenous and non-indigenous peoples alike transformed episodes of violence and ethnic cleansing into a redemptive narrative of American innocence, it interrogates the relationship between memories and the markets in which they circulate and locates American capitalism and colonialism at the centre of our understanding of indigenous history. He has published articles in the International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies and American Indian Quarterly. He has been a visiting scholar at the Howard R. Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders at Yale University and the D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the Newberry Library in Chicago.
Boyd is currently at work on a book about the influences of capitalism on historical memories of violence between the U.S. and indigenous peoples in the American West. He also has plenty of experience working on public history projects. He recently appeared in a PBS Documentary on the Modoc War, California’s last major military conflict involving indigenous peoples – available here: www.opb.org/programs/oregonexperience/programs/player/37-The-Modoc-War
Boyd Cothran will add important new strength in U.S. history and indigenous history in the Department, and we are very much looking forward to welcoming him in July to our midst.