Susan Sleeper-Smith

Biography

My research examines Native American-Euro-American encounters during the colonial and early national histories of North America.  I am interested in exploring history as a narrative that focuses on sites of encounter, particularly borderlands, where diverse people interacted and where identity, initially malleable, changed overtime. I have written about women’s involvement in that process, Native, Métis, and Euro-American, and I continue to explore how gender affects cultural interaction.  Religion, Catholicism as well as evangelical Protestantism, figure prominently in my work. I have published, “Indian Women and French Men: Rethinking Culture Encounter in the Great Lakes,” “Rethinking the Fur Trade: Cultures of Exchange in an Atlantic World,” “Contesting Knowledge: Museums and Indigenous Perspectives,” and “New Faces of the Fur Trade,”  as well as articles in “Ethnohistory,” “The William & Mary Quarterly,” and the “Journal of the Early Republic.” My articles are in numerous edited editions, including “Native Women’s History in Eastern North America and Enduring Nations,” and James Merrell’s, “Comparative Encounters.”