Ryan Hall
Department/Office Information
HistoryRyan Hall is an historian of the North American West, in particular Native American and borderlands history. His first book, Beneath the Backbone of the World: Blackfoot People and the North American Borderlands, 1720-1877, was a history of the Blackfoot (Niitsitapi) people of what is now Montana and Alberta. It told the story of how Blackfoot people used the ancient geography of their homelands to preserve their way of life during the chaotic early years of American and Canadian invasion.
His current research examines the long history of corruption and theft in America's "Indian Affairs" administration and asks how graft shaped U.S. westward expansion and the Indigenous experience during the nineteenth century. To learn more about Professor Hall's past and current research, listen to his recent with the New Books Network.
Prior to coming to ÌÇÐÄvlog¹ÙÍø, Professor Hall received his Ph.D. from Yale University and taught at the University of Toronto and Northern Arizona University. This fall he is teaching HIST223: The American West, HIST/NAST356: Global Indigenous History, and HIST400: Chaos and Crisis. In January he will bring his Global Indigenous History students to the island of O'ahu for two weeks of experiential and service learning about the history of Hawai'i and the Indigenous Pacific.