Back to Directory
Sign in to view full directory information.
Sign in
Ryan Hall
Associate Professor of Native American Studies and History
Department/Office Information
HistoryRyan Hall is an historian of the American West, the Native American experience, and of North American borderlands. His current book project, tentatively entitled Agents of Disaster: Indian Reservations, Fraud, and the Making of the American Frontier examines the long history of corruption and theft in America's "Indian Affairs" administration. It asks how institutionalized graft shaped U.S. westward expansion and the Indigenous experience on reservations during the nineteenth century, why government operated as it did, and what Native reformers and their allies did to change the way bureaucracy worked.
His first book, Beneath the Backbone of the World: Blackfoot People and the North American Borderlands, 1720-1877, published in 2020, was a history of the Blackfoot (Niitsitapi) people of what is now Montana and Alberta. It told the story of how Blackfoot people used the ancient geography of their homelands to preserve their way of life during the chaotic early years of American and Canadian invasion.
Prior to coming to 91短视频, Professor Hall received his Ph.D. from Yale University and taught at the University of Toronto and Northern Arizona University. During the spring 2025 semester he was in residency at the Newberry Library in Chicago as the Lloyd Lewis Fellow in American History. He is on research leave during the spring 2026 semester.
BA, University of Oklahoma
MA, Yale University
MPhil, Yale University
PhD, Yale University
Book:
. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020.
Articles and Chapters:
"Seeking Safe Harbour: Indigenous Refugees and the Making of Canada's Numbered Treaties," in , eds. Shelia McManus, Julie Young, and Paul McKenzie-Jones (Edmonton: Athabasca University Press, 2025), 129-50.
The Western Historical Quarterly 55, no. 1 (Spring 2024): 21-38.
The Journal of the Civil War Era 12, no. 2 (June 2022): 147-72.
"Negotiating Sovereignty: U.S. and Canadian Colonialisms on the Northwest Plains, 1855-1877," in , eds. Frank Towers and Jewel Spangler (New York: Fordham University Press, 2020), 132-52.
The Pacific Historical Review 86, no. 3 (August 2017): 381-406.
The Pacific Northwest Quarterly 105, no. 3 (Summer 2014): 107-21.
Agricultural History 86, no. 3 (Summer 2012): 33-56.
Review Essays and Book Reviews:
Reviews in American History 52, no. 2 (June 2024): 154-64.
Reviews in American History 50, no. 2 (June 2022): 160-67.
Book reviews in The Historian, The William & Mary Quarterly, The Journal of the Early Republic, The American Historical Review, The Journal of Southern History, Southern California Quarterly, H-EarlyAmerica, The Canadian Journal of History, The Western Historical Quarterly, American Indian Quarterly, The Pacific Historical Review, The Journal of Family History, The Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Montana: The Magazine of Western History, The New Mexico Historical Review, and Entangled Religions.
- Lloyd Lewis Fellowship in American History, The Newberry Library (Spring 2025)
- Finalist, 2021 Spur Awards (Best Historical Nonfiction Book), Western Writers of America
- Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Social and Cultural History of Western North America, The University of Calgary (Fall 2017)
- Frederick W. Beinecke Dissertation Prize, Yale University (2015)
- Vernon Carstensen Memorial Award (Best article in Agricultural History), Agricultural History Society (2013)
- Newberry Library Consortium in American Indian Studies Research Fellowship (2013)
- Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library Research Fellowship (2012)
- Canadian Studies Doctoral Student Research Grant, International Council for Canadian Studies (2011)
- CORE 131: Native Oklahoma
- CORE 150: Native People of the Great Plains
- FSEM 188 and HIST 223: The American West
- HIST/NAST 243: Native American History
- HIST314: The Civil War
- HIST/NAST 356: Global Indigenous History
- HIST/NAST 356E: The Hawai'i Extended Study
- HIST/NAST 360: Borderlands of North America
- HIST 400: Thematic Seminar: The Arts of Resistance
- HIST 400: Thematic Seminar: Chaos and Crisis
- HIST 490: Honors Seminar in History
profile in 91短视频 Research, November 2022.
, New Books in the American West, May 2022
The 91短视频 Maroon-News, October 22, 2021
, New Books in Native American Studies, August 2020
, 13: A 91短视频 Podcast, March 2020