History
Lori Daggar posing outside in front of a stone wall
Lori J. Daggar
Assistant Professor of History
Lori Daggar is a historian of early North America. Her teaching and research locates and follows connections between diverse peoples, locales, and ideas, and this approach enables her to link interests in empire, capitalism, and indigenous histories to problems related to market development, reform, and race in early America. In the classroom, she encourages students to contemplate difficult questions of gender, race, and class by combining interdisciplinary thinking, active learning strategies, and ample discussion.
Daggar’s first book project, under contract with University of Pennsylvania Press as part of its Early American Studies series, traces the development of American empire by looking at the ideas, policies, and consequences of economic development, mission work, and philanthropy in Indian Country at the turn of the nineteenth century. It frames the contested Ohio Country as a case study, and it demonstrates that we should not understand missions and “civilizing” policies simply as tools for “assimilating the Indians.” Instead, it demonstrates that missions were hinges for economic and political development that also offered Native peoples an additional discourse and means to negotiate for power.
Degrees
- B.A., Nazareth College
- M.A., University of Pennsylvania
- Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
Teaching
Courses Taught:
- CIE 200: Common Intellectual Experience (first-year seminar)
- HIST 125: Defining America: Early America in its Global Contexts
- HIST/ENGL 212: Bears Make History (DH course)
- HIST 220: Philadelphia Story: The City as Text
- HIST 225: Native North America
- HIST/GWSS 227: Witches, Drudges, and Good Wives: Gender, Race, and Sex in Early America
- HIST322: Making American Empire
- HIST 322: Revolutionary America in a Global Age of Revolution
- HIST 321: Colonial America: Violence, Movement, and Exchange in the Early Atlantic World
- HIST 421W: Native American Activism and Red Power
Professional Experience
Fellow, Bright Institute at Knox College, 2018-2020.
Advisory Council member and Research Associate, McNeil Center for Early American Studies
Research Interests
Early North American History
American Empire
History of Capitalism
Indian Removals
Missionaries, Philanthropy, and Empire
Diplomacy
Social Reform
Recent Work
Book Manuscript
Cultivating Empire: Philanthropy, Profit, and the Negotiation of American Imperialism in Indian Country (under contract with University of Pennsylvania Press)
Articles and Book Chapters:
“‘A Damnd Rebelious Race’: The U.S. Civilization Plan and Native Authority,” in Ignacio Gallup-Diaz and Geoffrey Plank, eds., Quakers and Native Americans (Brill Press, 2019).
“The Mission Complex: Economic Development, ‘Civilization’ and Empire in the Early Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 36, no. 3 (Fall 2016).
Book Reviews and Invited Review Essays:
Review of John Reda, From Furs to Farms: The Transformation of the Mississippi Valley, 1762-1825. Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Summer 2018): 352-354.
“Indigenous History and Imperial America: American Indian History Today and Tomorrow,” Reviews in American History, Vol. 45, No. 3 (September 2017): 378-383.
Review of Michael Leroy Oberg, Professional Indian: The American Odyssey of Eleazer Williams. Ethnohistory 63, no. 4 (2016).
Review of Fixico, Donald, Call for Change: The Medicine Way of American Indian History, Ethos, and Reality. H-AmIndian, H-Net Reviews. January, 2015.
Recent Invited Talks
| 2017 | “‘The Best and Cheapest Way to Get Rid of Them’: Philanthropy, Economy, and the Politics of Exclusion in Indian Country,” McNeil Center for Early American Studies, The Center Seminar Series |
| 2017 | “The Society of Friends, Early U.S. Indian Policy, and the Making of American Empire,” Haverford College |
Recent Conference Presentations:
| 2018 | “Diplomacy and the Negotiation of American Empire in Indian Country,” American Society for Ethnohistory Annual Conference |
| 2018 | “Speculative Philanthropy, Indigenous Dispossession, and the Making of American Empire,” Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Annual Meeting |
| 2018 | “Philanthropy and Profit in Indian Country,” Omohundro Institute Annual Conference |
| 2018 | “‘A Damnd Rebelious Race’: Negotiating ‘Civilization’ Policies in the Ohio Country,” Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Annual Meeting |
| 2017 | “‘Of Mercy and of Sound Policy Too’: Philanthropy and Empire in the Early Republic,” Society for Historians of the Early American Republic |
| 2017 | “‘Of Mercy and of Sound Policy Too’: Indian Removal and the Cultivation of American Empire,” Empires of Charity Workshop, University of Warwick, UK |
| 2016 | “’A damned rebelious race’: The U.S. ‘Civilization’ Plan and Native Authority,” Quakers and American Indians from the 1650s to the 21st Century, McNeil Center for Early American Studies |
| 2016 | “‘We are upon our own Business’: Hendrick Aupaumut and the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Power in the Early Republic,” American Historical Association Annual Meeting |