About Us
Dr. Alexandra E. Stern, Founder & Director
Dr. Alex Stern is a political historian of power in nineteenth-century America and Native America. For the past decade, she has been researching the connections between southern and western Civil War & Reconstruction era histories. Her intention with the Native Reconstruction Project is to build a visible community of early career and established scholars working on the history of Reconstruction, broadly defined (1846-1880s), in Indian country from a variety of perspectives & methodologies.
Her current book project, Native Reconstruction: Indian Territory and the Making of the Modern American Power, investigates the remaking of U.S. and Indigenous sovereignties after 1865 in Indian Territory and uncovers how federal Indian policy became a critical arena in which the revolutions of Reconstruction took place. In addition to her academic work, Stern has served as an expert consultant in federal Indian law cases, including the Supreme Court case Sharp v. Murphy (later decided by the Court in McGirt v. Oklahoma).
Stern is currently an assistant professor of History at the City College of New York (CUNY), where she teaches courses on the Civil War & Reconstruction, Indigenous history, the American South & West, and violence. She holds a Ph.D. & M.A. from Stanford University & a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Nicole Martin, Associate Director
Dr. Nicole Martin is the Women’s History in the Pacific West postdoctoral fellow for the National Park Service, Interior Regions 8, 9, 10, and 12. She specializes in Reconstruction, the American West, and gender and women’s history. Her research uncovers how the federal government, social and moral reformers, and various cultural authorities wielded the home as a powerful tool to measure the potential inclusion of Native peoples and other groups into the reconstructed American nation-state. Her current manuscript project, In the Name of the Home: The Reconstruction of Nineteenth-Century America, traces the creation and rise of the American home as the core social concept organizing nineteenth-century American society.
As an NPS fellow, Martin works closely with parks in the Pacific West to tell stories about the diverse array of women who have made, claimed, and defended their homes and homelands. She has partnered with over thirty parks and led them through a process of consultation with tribal partners, gathering materials from park archives and collections, and historical narrative creation. These stories of home and homelands will be brought to life in a virtual exhibit to be completed in 2024. Learn more about the project here.
Before her NPS fellowship, Martin taught for three years in Stanford's Thinking Matters program after receiving her Ph.D. there in 2018. Her work has been supported by the National Park Foundation, Stanford Humanities Center, the Mellon Foundation, and the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford.