My dissertation, “Unfree Soil: Empire, Labor, and Coercion in the Upper Mississippi River Valley, 1812-1861,” examines the relationship between slavery and conquest in the Upper Midwest. I ask how federal policy, the law, and settler colonialism fostered unfreedom in an ostensibly free portion of the United States.

In addition to the dissertation, I am engaged in research on Native Americans’ adoption of US citizenship prior to the passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868. I am currently revising an article on citizenship, race, and belonging in the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians.

My reflections on agency as a category of analysis in the field of Native American history appeared in the June 2023 issue of The American Historical Review.

Shawnee Mission School

Shawnee Indian Mission and Manual Labor School, Fairway, KS, 2020