Gregory D. Smithers
British Academy Global Professor
University of Hull
Gregory Smithers is a British Academy Global Professor whose research and writing focuses on the histories of Indigenous people and African Americans from the eighteenth century to the present. His work explores the history of the Cherokee people, Indigenous history from the Mountain South to California and the Southwest Pacific, and environmental history.
Qualifications/Education:
Ph.D. University of California, Davis
Projects:
Native Ecologies: A Deep History of Climate Change
Publications
2022 Reclaiming Two-Spirits: Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal & Sovereignty in Native America. With a forward by Blackfeet Elder Raven E. Heavy Runner. Beacon Press. Category Winner of the 2023 PROSE Awards in Cultural Anthropology and Sociology.
2019 Native Southerners: Indigenous History from Origins to Removal. University of Oklahoma Press
2017 Science, Sexuality, and Race in the United States and Australia, 1780-1940. Revised 2nd edition, University of Nebraska Press
2015 The Cherokee Diaspora: An Indigenous History of Migration, Resettlement, and Identity. Lamar Series in Western History, Yale University Press. Paperback March 2018
2015 Co-author with Brian D. Behnken. Racism in American Popular Media: From Aunt Jemima to the Frito Bandito. Racism in American Institutions Series, Praeger Press
2012 Slave Breeding: Sex, Violence & Memory in African American History. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Paperback 2013
2009 Co-author with Clarence E. Walker. The Preacher & the Politician: Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama & Race in America. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Paperback 2012
2008 Science, Sexuality, and Race in the United States and Australia, 1780s-1890s. Routledge Advances in American History, New York & London: Routledge
Impact and engagement/Recent news
2021 From Aunt Jemima to AI, How Racism Creeps Into Design, Bloomberg News, September 15
2021 “‘We are still here’: Native American Tribes in Tidewater begin work on new projects with funding from relief bill,” Daily Press, March 22
2021 “La otra censura de Disney,” El Periodico, February 1
2020 “On This Day: Lewis and Clark Mistakenly Believe They Reached the Pacific Ocean,” How We Got Here, NBC12 Podcast, November 7
2020 “Covid-19 Has Been Brutal in Indian Country – Just Like Past Epidemics Were, Washington Post, March 20
2020 “Discussion about ‘Native Southerners’” on WMRA’s Books and Brews author series, March 10 and 11
2020 “Reversing a River: How Chicago Flushed its Human Waste Downstream,” We’re History, February 18
