History Professor Awarded National Endowment for the Humanities Grant

Associate Professor of History Lori Daggar has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), an independent federal agency that aims to strengthen the nation by supporting brilliance within the humanities and working to ensure all Americans have access to the insights found in historical teachings.

The funding comes from the NEH’s Summer Stipends program, an initiative that promotes humanities research and further advances already developed ventures of great merit. Awardees are chosen after their submissions go through a rigorous review process by independent panelists. Daggar’s top-rated proposal focused on Indigenous sovereignty in the Age of Revolutions.

“My new book project places Indigenous peoples at the center of the Age of Revolutions (ca. 1760-1840), a time when people throughout the Atlantic world both waged war and sought political and social change via the American Revolution, French Revolution, Haitian Revolution, and Latin American revolutions,” said Daggar. “Rather than focus on these well-known revolutions, however, my new book project examines the ways in which North America’s Indigenous peoples and nations defined, projected, and protected their own independence, rights, and sovereignty (both political and cultural) during this age.”

The project has been a long-simmering aspiration, with inspiration for the book first striking Daggar during her days in graduate school. This desire, first sparked through her dissertation research, is now coming to fruition with the aid of the NEH award.

“I kept coming across speeches and petitions—written or spoken by Native individuals—that used a rhetoric of rights and nationhood. I was intrigued, and given that there just isn’t enough scholarship out there on Native peoples’ roles in the revolutionary age, I decided that I would dig deeper and pursue this as my next book project.”

After coming to this decision and completing some preliminary research, Daggar leaned further into what she’s most passionate about within history: individuals and the seemingly small exchanges between them that, in truth, are the writings of a much larger story. The personalized, connection-centered approach brings joy to the analyzation process. And, as Daggar notes, it (not coincidentally) often mirrors her style of teaching.

Daggar plans to use the funds to conduct archival research in Ottawa, Canada, and Massachusetts in the summer of 2024. “I’m so very thankful to the NEH and excited to see where my research takes me,” she said.