Monday Seminar:
Susan Brewer
UW System Fellow (2014-2015)
History, UW-Stevens Point
Susan Brewer’s project investigates the controversy over Oneida Indian land claims in central New York by tracing the history of one piece of property and the people—the Oneida families and her own—who have lived on it over the past 250 years. This story examines themes of diversity and entwined lives, war and revolution, trade and development, state violation of federal law, the influences of Oneida women on the story of the land, and the struggle to adapt and survive. This project explores the ways in which Americans have defined their identity and the role of place, culture, and history in the shaping of that identity.
Susan A. Brewer is a Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. She specializes in the study of American Foreign Relations and is the author of Why America Fights: Patriotism and War Propaganda from the Philippines to Iraq (Oxford, 2009) and To Win the Peace: British Propaganda in the United States during World War II (Cornell, 1997). She is interested in the construction of American national identity and the entanglement of history, myth, and culture. She is at work on a project entitled “The Best Land.”