Professional Summary
Dr. Zoe J. Waldman is a historian of early America, Native North America, and the early U.S. Republic.
Her current book project, Landscapes of Power: The Meaning of Treaties in Eastern North America, 1750-1790, reconstructs Indigenous-European-American treaty councils through place-based case studies. She argues that as European-American delegates imagined, projected, or wielded power at these events, treaties remained spaces of Indigenous authority and became microcosms of resistance. Native delegations’ diplomatic skills and decision-making enabled nations both large and small to preserve their homelands, protect their towns, and maintain their usufructuary rights from the mid-eighteenth century through the early nineteenth century within and outside the boundaries of eastern colonies and states.
Dr. Waldman earned her PhD from the University of Michigan, her MPhil from the University of Cambridge, and her BA from Brandeis University. Her research has been supported by the Newberry Library (Newberry Consortium in American Indian Studies) and the American Philosophical Society (Phillips Fund for Native American Research & David Center for the American Revolution).
Education
PhD: University of Michigan (History)
MPhil: University of Cambridge (American History)
BA: Brandeis University (History & American Studies)
Research and Practice Interests
Early America
Native North America
Atlantic World
United States
Race, Ethnicity, Indigeneity
Empires and Colonialism
Settler Colonialism
Legal and Constitutional
Digital History
Teaching with Archival Collections
Courses Taught
Resistance in Early America
Democracy and the American Tradition