About this Event
Dr. Nancy Shoemaker, professor of history at the University of Connecticut, will present the ECU Department of History's 2021 Brewster Lecture. Shoemaker will discuss her newest book, "The Whale Commons: Beached Whales in New England History."
Shoemaker is the author of several books including "Living with Whales: Documents and Oral Histories of Native New England Whaling History" (2014) and "Native American Whalemen and the World: Indigenous Encounters and the Contingency of Race" (2015).
Shoemaker teaches courses in American Indian history, Maritime History, and Environmental History. She has published numerous articles and four books. Her current research is on New England Indians and the American whaling industry.
In the 19th century, nearly all Native American men living along the southern New England coast made their living traveling the world's oceans on whaleships. Many were career whalemen, spending 20 years or more at sea. Their labor invigorated economically depressed reservations with vital income and led to complex and surprising connections with other Indigenous peoples, from the islands of the Pacific to the Arctic Ocean. At home, aboard ship, or around the world, Native American seafarers found themselves in a variety of situations, each with distinct racial expectations about who was "Indian" and how "Indians" behaved. Treated by their white neighbors as degraded dependents incapable of taking care of themselves, Native New Englanders nevertheless rose to positions of command at sea. They thereby complicated myths of exploration and expansion that depicted cultural encounters as the meeting of two peoples, whites and Indians.
Following Dr. Shoemaker's lecture, a panel of ECU History faculty (Drs. Chris Oakley, Lynn Harris, and Jason Raupp) will offer a discussion, and then questions from attendees will be welcome.
This event is co-sponsored by the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences and the ECU Chapter of Phi Kappa Phi.
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