Christian Gonzales

  • Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies
  • Tucker House, Rm 201
  • Phone: 401.874.5642
  • Email: cgonzal@uri.edu

Biography

I joined the Department of History in the fall of 2016. I received my Ph.D. in Early American and Native American history from the University of California, San Diego. After leaving UC San Diego, I became the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Native American Studies at Wesleyan University, and prior to arriving at URI, I was Assistant Professor of History at the City University of New York, LaGuardia Community College. My book, Native American Roots, explores the development of modern Indigenous identities within the settler-colonial context of the early United States. I am also an avid martial artist, cyclist, and gardener.

Research

Native American history, Native/Anglo/African-American race relations in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, particularly Native relations with Anglo religious reformers and black slaves; Native cultural histories, American Empire, and Early American slave systems.

Education

  • Ph.D., History, University of California, San Diego, 2010.
  • M.A., History, University of California, San Diego, 2003.
  • B.A., Cultural Anthropology and Classical Archaeology, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1995.

Selected Publications

Books

Native American Roots: Relationality and Indigenous Regeneration Under Empire, 1770-1859. Routledge, 2020.

Articles

‘Their Souls are Equally Precious’: Edward Harvey Davis, Benevolence,   Racial Logic, and the Colonization of Indigeneity,” Journal of San Diego History vol 60, number 3, summer 2014.