A visiting scholar and author who studies Native American and indigenous peoples will explain how they used what’s now the nation’s capital in a free public lecture set Tuesday, March 21, at MTSU.

Dr. Joseph Genetin-Pilawa

Dr. Joseph Genetin-Pilawa, an assistant professor of history at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, and MTSU’s 2017 Strickland Visiting Scholar in History, will speak on “The Indians’ Capital City: Native Histories of Washington, D.C.” March 21 at 6:30 p.m. in Room 106 of MTSU’s Paul W. Martin Sr. Honors Building.

A campus map with parking notes is available at http://tinyurl.com/MTSUParkingMap.

Genetin-Pilawa, who is the author of “Crooked Paths to Allotment: The Fight over Federal Indian Policy after the Civil War,” also will meet with Department of History students and faculty during his visit to MTSU, which is coordinated by the College of Liberal Arts.

The professor co-edited “Beyond Two Worlds: Critical Conversations on Language and Power in Native North America” and has held fellowships at the Smithsonian Institution, working at the National Museum of the American Indian, and at the Library of Congress’ Kluge Center. His current research examines the visual, symbolic and lived indigenous landscapes of Washington, D.C., focusing on ways native visitors and residents claimed and reclaimed spaces in the city.

The Strickland Visiting Scholar program allows students to meet with renowned scholars whose expertise spans a variety of historical issues. The Strickland family established the program in memory of Dr. Roscoe Lee Strickland Jr., a longtime professor of European history at MTSU and the first president of the university’s Faculty Senate.

For more information about this Strickland Visiting Scholar Lecture, please contact MTSU’s Department of History at 615-898-5798.

— Gina E. Fann (gina.fann@mtsu.edu)

Native delegations meet with President Andrew Johnson, center, in this lithograph from the March 16, 1867, edition of Harper’s Weekly, created from a photograph by Alexander Gardner and included in the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division. The print shows members of the Yankton, Santee Sioux (Dakota) and Upper Missouri Sioux tribes at a reception in the East Room of the White House on Feb. 23, 1867, and is part of MTSU’s Strickland Visiting Scholar Joseph Genetin-Pilawa’s research on indigenous peoples in the Washington area. (photo courtesy of the Library of Congress)