Christina Snyder

Thomas Milton Miller and Kathryn Owens Miller Associate Professor of History

Department of History

Campus
IU; IU Bloomington

Full Biography

Christina Snyder is a historian of colonialism, race, and slavery, with a focus on North America from the pre-contact era through the nineteenth century. Snyder’s first book, Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America, was published by Harvard University Press in 2010 and earned a wide range of accolades, including the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Book Prize, the James H. Broussard Prize from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, and the John C. Ewers Prize from the Western History Association. Snyder’s latest book, Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson will be released by Oxford University Press in early 2017. She is also the author of more than twenty-five articles and review essays, and her research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Antiquarian Society, the American Philosophical Society, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Snyder’s work has been featured on PBS, NPR and Slate.

At Indiana University, Snyder offers courses in US history and Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS), and her excellence in teaching has been recognized with a Trustees’ Teaching Award and an appearance on C-SPAN’s Lectures in History.

Honors and Awards

  • OAH Distinguished Lecturer
  • Kate B. & Hall. J. Peterson Fellowship, American Antiquarian Society, 2012-2013.
  • Outstanding Junior Faculty Award, Indiana University, 2012.
  • American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellowship, 2011-2012.
  • Trustees' Teaching Award, IU, 2011-2012.
  • Barra/Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, McNeil Center for Early American Studies, 2007-09.
  • Phillips Fellow, American Philosophical Society, 2006.

Research Interests

  • Native America
  • Early America
  • 19th Century North America
  • American South
  • Slavery and Race

Education

  • A.B. at University of Georgia (2001)
  • Ph.D. at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2007)

Courses Taught

Undergraduate:

  • AMST A275: Indigenous Worldviews
  • HIST A207: Introduction to Native American History
  • HIST A245: Indians and American Popular Culture
  • HIST J300: Natives and Newcomers in Early America

Graduate:

  • AMST G605: Introduction to Native American and Indigenous Studies
  • HIST H650: Ethnohistorical Methodology
  • HIST H699: Global History of Slavery

Publications

  • Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010).
    • Winner, John C. Ewers Prize, Western History Association
    • Winner, Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Book Prize
    • Winner, James Broussard Prize, Society for Historians of the Early American Republic
    • Honorable Mention, Frederick Jackson Turner Prize, Organization of American Historians
    • Finalist, Frederick Douglass Prize, Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition
  • "The South," in in Oxford Handbook of American Indian History, ed. Frederick Hoxie (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 315-334. 
  • "Native Nations in the Age of Revolution," in The World of the Revolutionary American Republic, ed. Andrew Shankman (New York: Routledge, 2014), 77-94.
  • " Indian Slavery," in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History , ed. John Butler (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
  • "The Long History of American Slavery," in the OAH Magazine of History 27 (October 2013): 23-27.
  • "Conquered Enemies, Adopted Kin, and Owned People: The Creek Indians and Their  Captives," Journal of Southern History 73 (2007): 255-288.