UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — “Sovereignty and Strife: The Civil War Era in Indian Territory” is the theme of three lectures being delivered Oct. 15-17 by Fay Yarbrough, William Gaines Twyman Professor of History and senior associate dean of the School of Humanities at Rice University, as part of the 2026 Steven and Janice Brose Distinguished Lecture Series at Penn State.
Yarbrough’s research focuses on interactions between Native peoples and people of African descent in the 19th century. She is the author of “Choctaw Confederates: The American Civil War in Indian Country” and “Race and the Cherokee Nation: Sovereignty in the Nineteenth Century.”
Yarbrough has also co-edited “Gender and Sexuality in Indigenous North America, 1400-1850” (with Sandra Slater) and “Empires and Indigenous Peoples: Comparing Ancient Roman and North American Experiences” (with Michael Maas). She has contributed to the volumes Race and Science, Civil War Wests, and Race and Gender at War, and has published articles in the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of Social History.
According to Yarbrough, there was not just a rupture between Northern and Southern states and Americans over the issue of slavery during the American Civil War; other groups, including several American Indian nations, were drawn into the dispute as well. Yarbrough’s lectures will examine the Civil War from the less familiar vantage point of Indigenous perspectives.
All three lectures, which are free and open to the public, will be held in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium (Room 102):
- Thursday, Oct. 15, 5:30 p.m. — "The Road to Disunion from an Indigenous Perspective”
- Friday, Oct. 16, 5:30 p.m. — “The Civil War through an Indigenous Lens”
- Saturday, Oct. 17, 11:30 a.m. — “An Indigenous Reconstruction”
The Brose Distinguished Lecture Series is offered by the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center through the generosity of an endowment created by Steven and Janice Brose. The lectures are co-sponsored by University Libraries.
For more information, contact the Richards Center at 814-863-0151 or visit the center’s website.