Profile:
Brian Hosmer researches and teaches in the area of American Indian History. He is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Director of the Newberry Library’s D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian History and the Committee for Institutional Cooperation American Indian Studies Consortium. Prior to joining the Newberry Library in August 2002, Hosmer was an Associate Professor of History at the University of Wyoming where he taught for six years (the last as department chair). His research interests focus upon intersections between economic change and cultural identity in American Indian Communities. In 1999 he published his first book, American Indians in the Marketplace: Persistence and Innovation among the Menominees and Metlakatlans, 1870-1920 (University Press of Kansas, 1999). His current project is a labor history of the Wind River Reservation, Wyoming. One essay, based upon oral interviews with New Deal era work relief participants, can be found in Native Pathways: Economic Development and American Indian Culture in the Twentieth Century, a volume Hosmer co-edited with Colleen O’Neill (University Press of Colorado, 2004).