Hello HIST 181!

Welcome to HIST 181, I’m glad you’re here! This is our space to post weekly blogs using the prompts that are assigned on the schedule page. I am Dr. Andrella, a historian and postdoctoral fellow of Digital Humanities at Knox. I hold a Ph.D. in U.S. and Native American history (with a minor in Latin American history), as well as a graduate certificate in Digital Humanities. I am currently working on my first book which re-conceptualizes Reconstruction as a national process that entailed both the restoration of the South and territorial expansion in the trans-Mississippi West.[1] I use Montana Territory as a case study to examine the interplay of local and federal forces on the ground, as well as how these efforts ultimately produced a more exclusionary, unstable, and violent nation.

This term, I am most looking forward to the “four views” digital project. We will be working with Joseph Taylor, archivist at Knox’s Special Collections and Archive, to engage with objects and Indigeneity in archival spaces. I have worked with students on a similar project in the past, and the final products are always so interesting!

I also hope that you will find our readings and conversations throughout the course thoughtfully engaging. We will be grappling with a variety of topics across hundreds of years of history. While we do not have any exams/tests/quizzes in the class, I look forward to reading about your thoughts and analyses in your weekly blog posts!

Lastly, here is a photo of two alpacas, because they are fuzzy and cute.

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Footnotes

[1] This book will be adapted from my dissertation, “When the War Raged On: Montana Territory, the Politics of Authority, and National Reconstruction.” See Jennifer Andrella, “When the War Raged on: Montana Territory, the Politics of Authority, and National Reconstruction,” 2022, Michigan State University. http://ezproxy.msu.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/when-war-raged-on-montana-territory-politics/docview/2730324833/se-2.