Field of Study
Early American History
Advisor
Andrew C. Lipman
Dissertation Title
“Women in the Woods: War, Gender, and Community in the Native Northeast, 1675-1763”
Dissertation Description
This dissertation is a
localized examination of culture through the perspectives of women on the move
during King Philip’s War and the series of wars between the French and British
from 1675 to1763. I study the complicated everyday lives of Native women of the
northeastern woodlands as wars and the threat of violence ensured that many
women, both European and Indian, were taken captive, and otherwise forced to
move from their homes either by enemies or kin. Captivity, slavery, religious
conversion, and war, more generally, all created willing and unwilling mobility
across spaces and across cultures. I argue that women, in these moments of
dislocation, both retained and reexamined cultural traditions. I explore what
effects that flux had upon not only women, but families, communities, and
cultures at large.