About
My teaching includes appointments as Asssitant Professor of Indigenous Studies at the University at Buffalo (SUNY, August 2022-Present), visiting Assistant Professor of Native American and Indigenous Studies at Hampshire College(Jan 2021-Present) and Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies at Brown University (Spring 2022). Prior to that, I was full-time faculty at SOWELA Technical Community College in Lake Charles, LA where I taught U.S. history, Louisiana history, and geography.
I graduated from the Transatlantic History Doctoral Program from the Department of History and Geography at the University of Texas at Arlington, completing all coursework with a 4.0 and mastered comprehensive examinations in the fields of Migration History, Revolutions, Cartographic History and the History of Exploration and “Discovery.”
My dissertation, entitled “Indians in their Proper Place: Culture Areas, Linguistic Stocks, and the Genealogy of a Map” explores 150 years of thematic maps of American Indian homelands, languages, and culture.
Prior to doctoral studies, I graduated from the Master’s of Arts Heritage Resources Program at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana in May 2011. That holistic program afforded me many research opportunities. The program also introduced and reinforced skills from a variety of fields, including: interpretation methods, materials conservation and preservation, museum and historic sites management, CRM law, Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) documentation, oral history, and ethnography.
My wide-ranging academic and research interests include social history,cultural anthropology (especially cultural diffusion), cartographic history, history of social sciences, labor and working-class history, socio-cultural theory, folklore, American Indian studies, ethnohistory, political economy, foodways, religious studies and aesthetics. Additional geographical and theoretical interests include: French/Spanish/ American Indian borderlands (and the Spanish North American frontier) of the 18th Century, South and Southeast Asia,global labor migration, the Czech Republic and Central Europe.
I have experience in event planning, non-profit administration, and grants management.
I have studied at a variety of institutions, ranging from Bossier Parish Community College where I received an associates degree to Charles University in Prague where I studied Czech history, politics, and culture for two semesters. I received bachelor’s degrees in History and Anthropology from the University of New Orleans in 2001, and a Master’s of Science Degree in Labor Studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2003. I have also completed graduate-level coursework in Education and Afro-American Studies.
Social network with me on FACEBOOK. Email me at Jamais.Vu@gmail.com or visit my blog.
Education
Fall 2020-Spring 2021. Scholar Workshops. School for Advanced Research.
Summer 2019. Material Maps in the Digital Age, Newberry Library Four Week Summer Seminar (NEH Sposored)
Fall 2018- Spring 2019. Postgraduate Research Fellow, the University of Texas at Arlington
Summer 2016. Digital Native American and Indigenous Studies workshop (NEH sponsored)
Fall 2011- August 2018. University of Texas at Arlington Transatlantic History Ph.D.
2009-2011. Northwestern State University M.A. Heritage Resources
2003. University of New Orleans Alternative Teacher Certification Program
2001-2003. University of Massachusetts Amherst, M.S. Labor Studies
1998-2001. University of New Orleans B.A. History; B.A. Anthropology
1992-1997. Bossier Parish Community College, A.G.S. Social Sciences
Selected Professional and Academic Memberships
American Historical Association Organization of American Historians American Society for Ethnohistory The Southern Historical Association
Dallas Area Social History Group Transatlantic History Student Organization
Texas State Historical Association Louisiana Historical Association Society for the History of “Discoveries” Texas Map Society
Native American and Indigenous Studies Association American Studies Association
Critical Ethnic Studies Association
Natchitoches Genealogical and Historical Association
American Association of Geographers
American Folklore Society (web only)
Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society
MAHR Awards, College of Liberal Arts Convocation 2010
National Trust for Historic Preservation
Phi Theda Kappa International Honor Society
The Phi Beta Kappa Society
Golden Key International Honour Society
American Association of University Professors
Past Memberships
American Anthropology Association (including section and interest memberships in Association for Indigenous Anthropologists; Anthropology of Work; Anthropology of Public Policy; Music and Sound), Caddo Conference Organization, George Wright Society North Louisiana Historical Association, Labor and Working Class History Association
Courses Taught and Students Supervised
Indigenous People and Places of North America
Black Natives: Anti-Blackness, Indigeneity, and Decolonization
Not Recognized: Struggle for Indigenous Rights, Land, and Acknowledgement
Natives as Proletarians: First Nations Peoples as Workers under Capitalism
Human Geography
Louisiana History
U.S. History to 1877
U.S. History 1877-Present
Supervisior for Independent Study Couses
Committee Member or Chair, Division III Projets, Hampshire College
Isabella Uttley-Rosado, Learning About the Land We are On, Hampshire College (18F), 2022
Blythe Wilde, Stories through the stars: What Birds Teach Us, Hamprhire College (18F), 2022
Fianna Wilde, Politics of Indigenous and Settler Land Relations, Storytelling, and Bird Migration, Hampshire College (18F), 2022
Kameron Morgan (Div II) “Why How History Is Taught Matters” (18F), 2021
Jackie Mattellian (Div II) “Critical Climatology: Focus on Indigenous Climate Solutions” (21S), 2022
Lars Wahlsten (Div II) “I am going home to the highway in my head – Magic, Blood, Ecosomatics, Rupture, Deviance, Violence” (20F), 2022
Charles Dent (Div II) “Critical Political Theory” (21F), 2022
Olivia Booth (Div II) “The Effects of Settler Colonialism on Environmental Degradation and Where We Go From Here” (20F), 2023- anticipated
Yarrow Skoblow (Div II), “Restorative Practice: Exploration and Embodiment” (20F), 2023- anticipated
Seminar Attendance, Trainings, Workshops, and Continuing Education
US Policy in the Global South with Nobel Peace Laureate Dr. Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Vincent Bevins, and Amy Goodman (moderator), UMass Amherst (via Zoom), September 19, 2022
50th Anniversary of Native Studies and launch of Department of Indigneous Studies, The University at Buffalo September 17, 2022
National Traditional Ecological Knowledge Summit, (via Zoom) May 2022
Voices of Social Change course by Laureate Education (via Coursera) April 2022
62nd Caddo Conference, Natchitoches LA, April 2022
Inidgenous/American Past and Futures: OAH Conference on American History, Boston, March 2022
Porous Borders: Multiracial Migrations and the Law in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, Kay Johnson Lecture in Asian and Asian American Studies Presented by Julian Lim, Hamshire College March 30, 2022
Hampshire College Sassafras, Stickball and Stories: Indigenous Cultures of the Gulf South. Fourth Tulane Indigenous Studies Symposium, March 19-20, 2022
Unfair Labor? American Indians and the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago with David Beck, Union Pacific Railroad Museum, March 15, 2022
Panel discussion, The Keepers of Corn/ Los Guardianes del Maiz, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, January 12, 2022
American Historical Association, 135th Annual Meeting, New Orleans LA January 6-9, 2022
“Religiously Mixed” with Rabbi Marjorie Berman and Riyana Zafira Razalee. The Mixed Space, December 14, 2021
“The Climate Crisis: A Reading and Discussion.” The Massachusetts Review, December 10, 2021
Prospects for Peace and Justice in Israel and Palestine with Sally Abed, Noam Chomsky, Alon-lee Green, Jim McGovern and James Zogby moderated by Omar Dahi. Boston Review and Standing Together (virtual event) December 9, 2021
A panel discussion on Shay Hazkani’s “Dear Palestine: A Social History of the 1948 War” with Shay Hazkani, Nadia Abu El-Haj, Areej Sabbagh-Khoury, and Laila Parsons, IHGMS The University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Decmeber 9, 2021
A panel discussion on Thomas Kohut’s “Empathy and the Historical Understanding of the Human Past,” IHGMS The University of Massachusetts at Amherst, November 29, 2021
Alice Nash with Elizabeth Pangburn, “Unpacking Le Gip,” November 27, 2021
Society for the History of Discoveries 2021 Virtual Conference, Changing Tides: Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans on the Gulf Coast, November 18-20, 2021
Virtual artist talk, Rollin and Mary Ella King Native artist fellow, Brandon Adriano Ortiz-Concha, School for advanced Research, November 18, 2021
Indigenous Lifeways, the mixed space (via Zoom) November 16, 2021
White House Tribal Nations Summit, November 15-16, 2021
Increasing Higher Education Access for Native Students, Dr. Elena Hood, CSU East Bay, November 15, 2021
Fourteeenth Biennial Native American Symposium, Southeastern Oklahoma State University, Durant OK, November 12, 2021
Native American Perspectives on Statues and Monuments, Northeastern State University Tahlequah OK, Novemer 10, 2021
Taking Children, Taking the Land: Nick Estes with Rebecca Nagle. Lannan Readings and Conversations, November 10, 2021
2021 Indigenous Mapping Workshop: Mapping Turtle Island, Indigenous Mapping Collective, November 1-5, 2021
AHA Texas Conference on Introductory History Courses, Fall 2021
Margaret Bruchac, “Restorative Indigenous Research in the Kwinitekw (Connecticut) River Valley,” Hampshire College November 1, 2021
Celebrate Design Students and Community Parners, “Acknowldge and Listen”deCordova Musuem, October 28, 2021
Hoodwinked in the Hothouse Part II: Frontline Voices of Indigenous Resistance beyond Climate False Solutions. The New School, New York City (online) October 27, 2021
The Negev Bedouin: Emptied Lands and Displaced People, Greadue Center at CUNY, October 27, 2021
Kamloopa: An Indigenous Matriarch Story, WAM Theater, October 24, 2021
Third Barry Lawrence Rudderman Confernce on Cartography: Indigenous Mapping. David Rumsey Map Center at Stanford Libraries, Oct 20-22, 2021.
American Indian and Indigenous Community Center at Virginia Tech- Virtual Lunch Series, 2021
Indigenous Canada, University of Alberta with Dr. Traci Bear and Dr. Paul Gareau (Coursera) 2021
“An Immersive Journey to the Andean Highlands of Peru,” School for Advanced Research, December 2, 2020
Robert Miller on “The Indian Law Bombshell: McGirt v. Oklahoma,” American Philosophical Society, Nov. 19, 2020
Covid-19 Contact Tracing Course- Johns Hopkins University (Certificate via Coursera) September 5, 2020
“Why Study Labor History?” with Toni Gilpin, September 3, 2020
Feminisms & Indigenous Womxn: Two-Spirit, Gender and SexualityIndigenous Environmental Network, September 2, 2020
Reclaiming the Ancestors: Indigenous and Black Perspectives on Repatriation, Human Rights, and Justice Confirmation, September 2, 2020
Third Annual OER Conference #LCTCS2020OER Louisiana Community and Technical College System (LCTCS), South Louisiana Community College, February 7, 2020
Tourism and Travel Management Course- University of Queensland Australia (via EdX) May 6, 2019
Robert B. Caldwell 
