Miller Wright
Doctoral candidate at Rice University and the Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil
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I am a doctoral candidate at Rice University and the Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil. This Fall at Rice, I will be teaching the first half of the U.S. survey as Early Native North America, 1500 to 1840. I am excited for the opportunity to share my development of this course and the challenges and benefits of teaching the History of the United States while centering Native perspectives, alongside the challenges of teaching courses in a dual online and in-person format during a global pandemic.

My research focuses on the history of Native enslavement and the Native slave trade in the North American Southeast and Southern Brazil in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Additionally, I have written about Creek matrilineages and property-ownership at the turn of the nineteenth century in a forthcoming article in this year’s issue of Native South. I find that the comparative  questions that I ask in my own research benefit the way that I structure my courses. Particularly in survey courses, I focus on primary sources to help students understand what exactly historians do. As I hope to demonstrate, students this semester will have ample opportunity to do so in our weekly primary source workshops. I look forward to the conversations and feedback that this community of fellow teachers and historians has to offer.

I am a doctoral candidate at Rice University and the Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil. This Fall at Rice, I will be teaching the first half of the U.S. survey as Early Native North America, 1500 to 1840. I am excited for the opportunity to share my development of this course and the challenges and benefits of teaching the History of the United States while centering Native perspectives, alongside the challenges of teaching courses in a dual online and in-person format during a global pandemic.

My research focuses on the history of Native enslavement and the Native slave trade in the North American Southeast and Southern Brazil in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Additionally, I have written about Creek matrilineages and property-ownership at the turn of the nineteenth century in a forthcoming article in this year’s issue of Native South. I find that the comparative  questions that I ask in my own research benefit the way that I structure my courses. Particularly in survey courses, I focus on primary sources to help students understand what exactly historians do. As I hope to demonstrate, students this semester will have ample opportunity to do so in our weekly primary source workshops. I look forward to the conversations and feedback that this community of fellow teachers and historians has to offer.