Fields
African American
Native American
African Diaspora
Nineteenth Century
United States
Teaching
African American History 1
Natives and Newcomers: Multicultural Encounters in North American History
The Black West
Public Narratives: Monuments, Cultural Centers, and Museums as Sites of Contestation
- PhD, Indiana University, 2017
- BA, University of California, Santa Barbara
Education & Training
- Honorable Mention, Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Book Prize (2023)
- W. Turrentine Jackson Book Prize, Western History Association (2022)
- John C. Ewers Award, Western History Association (2022)
- Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize, Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln (2022)
- Finalist, Los Angeles Times Book Prize (2022)
- Finalist, Lincoln Prize, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History (2022)
- Vicki Ruiz Award, Western History Association (2021)
- Phillis Wheatley Book Prize, Sons and Daughters of the United States Middle Passage (2021)
- Dietrich School Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh (2018-2020)
- George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center Postdoctoral Fellowship, The Pennsylvania State University (2017)
- Trennert-Iverson Scholarship, Western History Association (2016)
- Indian Student Conference Scholarship, Western History Association (2016)
- Phillips Fund for Native American Research Grant, American Philosophical Society (2015)
(March 2026) “Fighting on Two Fronts,” Journal of the Civil War Era vol. 16, no. 1
(November 2025) “A Pedagogy of Empathy and Self-Interest in Teaching Multiracial History,” Journal of Southern History vol. 91, no. 4
(June 2025) Editor with Joan Cashin, Material Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (special issue), Journal of the Civil War Era vol. 15, no. 2
(June 2025) Roundtable Organizer & Facilitator, “‘We Are Cherokee’: Exhibiting Material Culture as an Act of Reconciliation,” Journal of the Civil War Era vol. 15, no. 2
(May 2024) Essay response to “Holding Space in Colonial Settler Histories: Book Forum on Alaina E. Roberts’ I’ve Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land (2021),” Settler Colonial Studies vol. 14, no. 2
(March 2023) “Black Slaves and Indian Owners: The Continuous Rediscovery of Indian Territory,” Journal of the Civil War Era vol. 13, no. 1
(February 2023) “Settlement” in Democracies in America: Keywords for the 19th Century and Today, eds. D. Berton Emerson and Gregory Laski (Oxford University Press)
(December 2022) “At the Intersection of Chickasaw Identity & Black Enslavement,” Southern Cultures vol. 28, no. 3
(September 2021) “When Black Lives Matter Meets Indian Country: Using the Cherokee and Chickasaw Nations as Case Studies for Understanding the Evolution of Public History and Interracial Coalition,” American Indian Quarterly vol. 45, no. 3
(April 2021) I've Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land (University of Pennsylvania Press)
(April 2021) Roundtable, "No More Nations within Nations: Indigenous Sovereignty after the End of Treaty-Making in 1871," The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era vol. 20, no. 2
(June 2020) “A Different Forty Acres: Land, Kin, and Migration in the Late Nineteenth Century West,” Journal of the Civil War Era vol. 10, no. 2
(January 2018) “A Hammer and a Mirror: Tribal Disenrollment and Scholarly Responsibility,” Western Historical Quarterly vol. 49, no. 1
To see a complete and up-to-date list of publications, please visit: alainaeroberts.com
My research focuses on the intersection of Black and Native American history from the nineteenth century to the modern day, particularly the history and legacies of slavery in the Five Tribes of the Southeast, the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Seminole, and Muscogee Creek Nations. This specialization stems from my own family history: my paternal ancestors were Black and mixed-race people enslaved in the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations.
I’ve written for mainstream outlets like TIME magazine, the Washington Post, and High Country News, and published academic essays in the Western Historical Quarterly, the Journal of the Civil War Era, American Indian Quarterly, Southern Cultures, and the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. My work has been profiled by CNN, The Atlantic, the New York Times, and the Boston Globe, among other outlets, and I was featured in a docuseries, The Real Wild West, available on Amazon Prime, Curiosity Stream, and Roku.
In my first book, I’ve Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021), I use archival research and family history to tell a multi-layered story of settlement and emancipation in Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma) that calls into question our traditional categories of victim/victimizer, kin/outsider, and indigenous/migrant.
I've Been Here All the While was awarded the Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize by the Center for Great Plains Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the Sons and Daughters of the United States Middle Passage's Phillis Wheatley Book Prize, and the Western History Association's John C. Ewers Award and W. Turrentine Jackson Book Prize.
My second book project is a personal history of the Chickasaw Nation, exploring the legacies of slavery and the possibilities for reconciliation between the enslaved and the enslavers.
If you are a potential graduate student looking to study nineteenth-century African American or Native American history, please reach out via email before applying.
