Changes at Muster HQ

We are pleased to announce the addition of a new field correspondent to the Muster team! Please join us in welcoming Michelle Cassidy, who will be contributing posts on Native Americans in the Civil War era, starting sometime later this spring. Dr. Cassidy is an assistant professor of history at Central Michigan University. She received her Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan in 2016. Her current project emphasizes the importance of American Indian military service to discussions of race and citizenship during the Civil War era. She has presented her research at numerous conferences, including the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, Ethnohistory, and the American Historical Association. Her article in the Michigan Historical Review, “‘The More Noise they Make’: Odawa and Ojibwe Encounters with American Missionaries in Northern Michigan, 1837-1871,” explores how Anishinaabe cultural logic, leadership, and perceptions of spiritual power shaped Native life in the mid-nineteenth century and influenced some Anishinaabe men to enlist in the Union army. Dr. Cassidy can be contacted at cassi2m@cmich.edu.

We also have another change to our list of field correspondents. Maria Angela Diaz will no longer be writing for us on a regular basis, but we wish her well on her future projects, including her manuscript, currently titled Saving the Southern Empire: The Gulf South, Latin America, and the Civil War. Her work brings an important perspective to discussions of race, gender, and class in the Gulf South during this period. Thank you, Dr. Diaz, for your service to Muster.