Hawgon-Silverhorn drawings
Ayer Collection, Newberry Library
The D'Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian History was founded in 1972. Its goals are to encourage the use of the Newberry collections in American Indian and Indigenous studies (see the American Indian History Collection); improve the quality of what is written about American Indians and Indigenous peoples; educate teachers about American Indian and Indigenous cultures, histories, and literatures; assist American Indian tribal and Indigenous historians in their research; and provide a meeting ground where scholars, teachers, tribal historians, and others interested in American Indian and Indigenous studies can discuss their work with each other.
The McNickle Center's staff, affiliated research projects, and fellows have played a major role in shaping modern scholarship on American Indian and Indigenous studies. In its first two decades the Center hosted nearly one hundred pre- and post-doctoral scholars on long-term fellowships, generally of six to eleven months duration. During the same period nearly two hundred short-term fellows spent between two weeks and two months conducting research at the Newberry. These long and short-term fellows have produced nearly forty books and dozens of scholarly articles.
These initiatives broaden the McNickle Center's mission and compliment our other activities. The Center sponsors conferences, seminars, and workshops for scholars and teachers; administers several fellowship programs; and publishes Meeting Ground, a national newsletter. It is also home to the Newberry Consortium in American Indian Studies (NCAIS).
McNickle Center Links
NCAIS
Fellowships
Resources
Indians of the Midwest
Past Programs
Contact Information
D'Arcy McNickle Center for
American Indian History
The Newberry Library
60 West Walton Street
Chicago, IL 60610-3380
Phone: (312)255 3564
mcnickle@newberry.org
Phone (312) 255-3564
Scott Stevens
Director
Phone (312) 255 3563
stevenss@newberry.org
Loretta Fowler, Editor
Indians of the Midwest project
fowlerl@newberry.org
Brian Mornar
Research Assistant
mornarb@newberry.org
Jade Cabagnot
Program Assistant
Phone (312) 255-3564
cabagnotj@newberry.org
Mailing List
To be added to our mailing list, send an email to mcnickle@newberry.org with your preferred email address or send your information to our mailing address:
Seminars and Programs
From Metacom to Tecumseh: Alliances, Conflicts, and Resistance in Native North America
A NEH Summer Institute for College & University Teachers
14 June - 9 July 2010
The Newberry Library’s D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian History invites college and university teachers nationwide to apply for its 2010 NEH summer institute, From Metacom to Tecumseh: Alliances, Conflicts, and Resistance in Native North America. This 4-week institute will examine the complex and shifting alliances between various Indian nations of North America and European colonists competing for land and political ascendancy in regions east of the Mississippi between the years 1675 and 1815. The institute led by Scott Manning Stevens (Director, D’Arcy McNickle Center), will feature four guest lecturers in American Indian studies, American history, art history, and literature, as well as Newberry staff experts in cartography and American Indian materials in the Ayer Collection. The institute will comprise of lectures, discussions, museum visits, and opportunities for primary research in the library’s rich humanities archive. The 25 participants will be drawn from across academic disciplines and institutions and encouraged to share their expertise and approaches to pedagogy.
Applications are encouraged from teachers of a broad range of disciplines. Full-time college and university teachers working in public, private, and religiously-affiliated institutions in the United States or its territorial possessions are eligible; see the application guidelines for complete eligibility criteria. Successful applicants will receive a stipend of $3,300 to help defray travel and housing expenses. Click on the Metacom webage for more information and application instructions.
Faculty in order of their visits are:
June 14-18, 2010 Prof. Jenny Hale Pulsipher, Brigham Young University.
June 21-25, 2010 Prof. Stephanie Pratt (Dakota), University of Plymouth.
June 28-July 2, 2010 Prof. Jon Parmenter, Cornell University.
July 5-9, 2010 Prof. Greg Dowd, University of Michigan.
Seminar in American Indian Studies
D'Arcy McNickle Center launched the Seminar Series in American Indian Studies in the fall 2008. The seminar features scholarly discussion of papers based on work-in-progress. Faculty, graduate students, and independent scholars are urged to plan to attend and to circulate news of this forum to colleagues. The Seminar meets at the Newberry Library, Towner Fellow's Lounge on Thursdays, 4-5:30. Additional information will be forthcoming closer to the date of each seminar. Interested parties should contact Scott Stevens stevenss@newberry.org.
Forthcoming Seminar
Lying Together: Cross-Cultural Untruths and Their Imperial Implications.Joshua Piker, University of Oklahoma. This seminar is co-sponsored by the Scholl Center Seminar in Early American History and Culture.
November 18, 2009, 5:30-7pm
Indians and Europeans regularly lied to each other. Our familiarity with that fact has, however, obscured a subset of lies that is worth examining in more detail: those told on both sides of the frontier. This paper focuses on the cross-cultural lies told about Acorn Whistler, a Creek executed in 1752. The process by which Creeks and imperial officials came to tell the same lies offers a unique window onto the quotidian meaning of both Indian and imperial power. The paper argues that lies told in Coweta and Charleston can have an impact in London and may affect how we understand Lexington and Concord.
We will pre-circulate papers to those planning to attend. If you cannot attend and want to read a paper, please contact the author directly. E-mail scholl[at]newberry.org,or call (312) 255-3524 to receive a copy of the paper. Papers are available for request two weeks prior to the seminar date. Please include your e-mail address in all correspondence.
The seminar format assumes that all participants have read the essays in advance, and that all those requesting the paper will attend the seminar. Please do not request a paper unless you plan to attend. We encourage faculty members to call the seminar to the attention of graduate students