Faculty Profile

Christopher Bilodeau

Associate Professor of History (2006)

Contact Information

bilodeac@dickinson.edu

Denny Hall Room 207
717-245-1385

Bio

He focuses his research on the history of American Indian-European interaction during the American colonial period, paying particular attention to the French, English, and Indian interaction. He teaches courses on Colonial America, the American Revolution, American Indian History, and the roles that violence plays in colonial situations.

Education

  • B.A., University of Vermont, 1991
  • M.A., Brown University, 1994
  • M.A., Columbia University, 1998
  • Ph.D., Cornell University, 2006

2023-2024 Academic Year

Fall 2023

HIST 117 American Hist 1607 to 1877
This course covers colonial, revolutionary, and national America through Reconstruction. Include attention to historical interpretation. Multiple sections offered.

HIST 286 New Nation
Reading and research in the political, economic, and social developments of the U.S. during the first generations of official nationhood, from the writing and ratification of the Constitution to the end of the Mexican War.

HIST 311 Violence and Colonialism
This course will place, in a comparative perspective, the key role of violence in European colonization of numerous parts of the world. Three geographical locations will be analyzed (North America, South America, and Africa) and four imperial powers (English, French, Spanish and German) over the period of the 16th through 20th centuries. The goal is not a comprehensive look at the roles of violence in colonialism, but an episodic analysis of the ways in which violence manifests itself in colonial situations across time and space. Topics will include (among others) theories of violence, the origins of colonial violence, the roles of violence in colonizing versus colonized societies, overt resistance to colonial domination, and the power and persistence of symbolic violence.

HIST 500 Independent Study

Spring 2024

HIST 248 The American Revolution
This course will focus on the period between 1763 and the first decade of the 1800s in North America, a time of tumultuous upheaval, intellectual ferment, and sporadic but intense violence which culminated in the creation of the United States. It will cover topics such as the expulsion of the French from North America, the rise of the a bourgeois public sphere, colonial contestation over sovereignty with Great Britain, the role of the military and violence in the new nation, republicanism, and the immediate ramifications of independence on a wide variety of groups within North America, such as women, American Indians, and free and slave African Americans.

HIST 311 Natives & Board Sch in N Amer
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, native populations were subjected to numerous tactics that attempted to eradicate native society and culture out of existence. Indian boarding schools—starting with the flagship Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1879—were formed throughout the United States and Canada as an educational arm of this cultural eradication. This upper-level course will examine both the history of the boarding school project in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and reflect on its impact on native peoples today. We will look extensively at the historiography of the boarding schools—what historians have written about the topic—as well as primary materials from Dickinson College’s Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center to both familiarize ourselves with the subject and write our own research works on this fascinating and disturbing moment in American history.