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Indiana University Bloomington
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Department of American Studies College of Arts and Sciences
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Christina Snyder

Picture of Christina Snyder

Assistant Professor
Department of American Studies
Department of History

Office: Ballantine Hall 828
Phone: (812) 855-2287
E-mail: snyderch at indiana.edu

Education

Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2007
A.B., University of Georgia

Research Interests

Native North America; Early America; The American South; Histories of Race, Captivity, and Slavery.

Personal Statement

My research focuses on race, class, Indigenous sovereignty, and the intersection of U.S. and Native American history. In my first book, Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America, I used the lens of captivity to explore changing notions of identity among Native Americans of the South. Warfare and its concomitant captive-taking reveals much about identity because it forced peoples to define themselves during crucial historical moments. I traced the dynamic institution of captivity from roughly A.D. 1000, when Native chiefdoms competed for regional power, through the conclusion of the Second Seminole War in 1842, which marks the final captive-taking episode in the contested American South. In Southern history, American Indians often emerge only as bit actors in the teleological tale of a biracial region; this book attempts to restore Native peoples to their proper role as central actors in the region’s history. More broadly, Slavery in Indian Country addresses the construction of race and racism and contributes to a growing body of scholarship on the diversity of bondage in the Americas.

Currently, I'm at work on a book-length work called The Indian Gentlemen of Choctaw Academy: Status and Sovereignty in Antebellum America. Choctaw Academy, operating from 1825 to 1848, was the first multitribal boarding school in the United States, and it was run by Richard Mentor Johnson (vice president under Van Buren) and Johnson's mixed-race family. Although initiated by the Choctaw Nation, the Academy became home to a diverse range of Native peoples from the Southeast and Midwest, including Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws, Seminoles, Potawatomis, Miamis, and Osages. Although extraordinary in many respects, Choctaw Academy illuminates wider patterns in American antebellum history; this place has much to teach us about the gap between racial ideology and everyday practice, as well as cross-cultural ideas about class and status, and Indian notions of sovereignty during the crucial Removal era.

Courses Recently Taught

Undergraduate:

  • Natives and Newcomers in Early America
  • Introduction to Native American History
  • Native American and Indigenous Cultures
  • Native American Women

Graduate:

  • Introduction to Native American and Indigenous Studies

Publication Highlights

Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010).

"Conquered Enemies, Adopted Kin, and Owned People: The Creek Indians and Their Captives," Journal of Southern History 73 (2007): 255-288.

"The Lady of Cofitachequi: Gender and Political Power among Native Southerners."  In South Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times, eds. Joan Johnson, Valinda Littlefield, and Marjorie Spruill. University of Georgia Press, 2009.

Honors and Awards

  • Winner, Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Book Prize, 2011
  • Winner, James H. Broussard Prize, Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, 2011
  • American Council of Learned Sciences (ACLS) Fellowship, 2011-2012
  • Honorable Mention, Frederick Jackson Turner Award, Organization of American Historians, 2011
  • History News Network's Top Young Historians, 2010
  • Barra Postdoctoral Fellow, McNeil Center for Early American Studies, 2007-09
  • Royster Fellow, UNC, 2006-07
  • Phillips Fellow, American Philosophical Society, 2006