Scholarly Articles and Book Chapters

"The Sachem and the Minister: Questions, Answers, and Genre Formation in the New England Missionary Project" (Forthcoming 2020 in Early American Literature).

This article looks at the history behind the formation of the post-sermon question and answer session - a central genre of the New England Protestant missionary project. By recovering the important ties between the Puritan missionary John Eliot and the Massachusett sachem Cutshamekin, I argue that the question and answer genre was not merely an extension of Protestant catechistical practices as many scholars have argued, but that the genre also borrows from a longer history of indigenous diplomatic negotiation practices. In tracing an alternative, indigenous history for the language practices of the New England mission, I show how English missionaries were deeply reliant on indigenous leaders for the success of their missions and, at the same time, reveal some of the complex reasons behind indigenous participation in the missionary project.

"Apostates in the Woods: Quakers, Praying Indians, and Circuits of Communication in Humphrey Norton’s New-England’s Ensigne" (Forthcoming December 2018 in the Brill collection Quakers and Native Americans, Eds. Ignacio Gallup-Diaz and Geoffrey Plank).

This chapter focuses on a 1656 encounter that took place in the woods outside of Boston between the Quaker convert Nicholas Upshall and a man whom he titles an “Indian Prince.” After Upshall was banished by the Bay Colony authorities in the middle of winter for his support of the newly-arrived Quakers, the Indian Prince offered him food, shelter, and friendship. As the first recorded meeting between the Quakers and the Indians in New England, Upshall's encounter with the Indian Prince was often used by Quaker authors as evidence that the Quakers were allies of the American Indian from the start. Combining close reading, topographical and spatial analysis with Indigenous historical records, my paper suggests that the Indian Prince whom Upshall met was likely the Massachusett sachem Josias Wompatuck, son of the Chickatawbut and nephew of Cutshamekin. Wompatuck was also a former member of John Eliot’s Praying Indian community. I argue that identifying Josias Wampatuck as the Indian Prince allows us see that Quaker-Puritan conflicts of the 1650s and 1660s as more than just a Protestant religious controversy, but rather a conflict that took place on Algonquian land, was shaped by Algonquian people, and played out on top of longstanding relationships between English settlers and Algonquian inhabitants.

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2016 McNeil Center Conference "Quakers, First Nations and American Indians from the 1650s to the 21st Century."

“The Methodologies of Kinship: Community, Conversion, and the Digital Turn” in The Afterlives of Indigenous Archives Eds. Gordon Henry, Jr. and Ivy Schweitzer (University Press of New England, 2019).

"The Methodologies of Kinship" interrogates the relationship between the generic conventions of seventeenth century conversion narratives and the subsequent ways in which these narratives were archived. It then takes a new look at conversion narratives using the lens of Indigenous kinship. Finally, the article theorizes some possible ways that kinship can be used to create new methodologies for organizing Early American digital archives.

This article was originally presented as part of the Society of Early Americanists symposium at Dartmouth College held to honor the launch of Dartmouth College's Occom Circle Project.

Encyclopedia and Reference Articles

“Early Native Voices from the British Colonies.” Colonial Era to the 19th Century in American Literature. Ed. Laura A. Leibman. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2016. Gale Researcher, Web.

“Book of Martyrs by John Foxe (Publication of),”“Founding of the Quakers.” Great Events in Religion: An Encyclopedia of Pivotal Events in Religious History. Eds. Florin Curta and Andrew Holt. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC CLIO, 2017.

“Graduate School Applications: Writing a Research Statement.” Purdue OWL. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University, 2013.