Scholarly Publications

Books:

Muddy Ground: Native Peoples, Chicago's Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2023).

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles:

“Sigenauk’s War of Independence: Anishinaabe Resurgence and the Making of Indigenous Authority in the Borderlands of Revolution,” The William and Mary Quarterly. (October 2021). Winner of the Dorothy Schwieder Prize for best article in Midwestern History from the Midwest History Association.

Abstract: During the upheaval of the American Revolution, Indigenous peoples in the Great Lakes harnessed the uncertain geopolitics of the era to advance their own objectives in the region. Sigenauk, a leader from the Anishinaabe towns southwest of Lake Michigan, navigated these changing dynamics to defend and expand his faction’s autonomy while simultaneously enhancing his individual influence in the wider borderland. Tracing Sigenauk’s rise to prominence highlights how such headmen blended traditional elements of Native leadership with novel innovations to address the new opportunities and challenges posed by the conflict. Sigenauk’s machinations during the war culminated in leading a joint expedition with the Spanish against the British at Saint Joseph. Sigenauk’s successful navigation of internal dynamics within Anishinaabewaki and the wider turmoil of the revolutionary borderlands strengthened his southwestern faction’s bid to reconstitute power in the region. Following the war, the southwestern Anishinaabeg under Sigenauk continued to flourish as a separate and sovereign force in their homeland. The ascension of Sigenauk and the southwestern Anishinaabeg at this moment challenges common assumptions that the American Revolution ushered in an era of decline for Native peoples.

 “The Ecology of Travel on the Great Lakes Frontier: Native Knowledge, European Dependence, and the Environmental Specifics of Contact,” Michigan Historical Review (Spring 2019). Awarded the Graduate Student Essay prize for best article submitted to MHR in 2018 and the Phillip Gleason Prize for best published article in History, U. of Notre Dame.

Peer Reviewed Chapters:

“Spain’s Bid for the American Interior? The Imperial Contest Over the Revolutionary Great Lakes,” in Gabriel Paquette and Gonzalo Quintero, Spain and the American Revolution: New Approaches and Perspectives, (New York: Routledge, 2020).

“The American West and the Twentieth Century” in Darren Dochuk and Jerald Podair, eds. Routledge History of the 20th Century United States, (New York: Routledge, 2018).

Book Reviews:

Review of City of Lake and Prairie: Chicago’s Environmental History. Kathleen A. Brosnan, Ann Durkin Keating, and William C. Barnett, eds., The Western Historical Quarterly, Volume 53, Issue 2, (Spring 2022): 97-98.

Review of These People Have Always Been a Republic: Indigenous Electorates in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1598-1912. By Maurice S. Crandall, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Volume 44, Issue 3, (Fall 2021).

Review of Virginia 1619: Slavery and Freedom in the Making of English America. Paul Musselwhite, Peter C. Mancall, and James Horn, eds., The Historian, Volume 83, Issue 1 (2021): 71-72.

Review of Memory Lands: King Philip's War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast. By Christine DeLucia, Ethnohistory, 66:2 (April 2019): 385–6.

Review of Rainy Lake House: Twilight of Empire on the Northern Frontier. By Theodore Catton, Western Historical Quarterly, Volume 49, Issue 3, (July 2018): 369–370.

Review of Liquid Landscape: Geography and Settlement at the Edge of Early America. By Michele Currie Navakas, H-Net Reviews. January 2018.

Review of The Borderland of Fear: Vincennes, Prophetstown, and the Invasion of the Miami Homeland. By Patrick Bottiger, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Volume 41, No. 2 (2017).