University of Pennsylvania, PhD '15
University of Oregon, MA '09

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Early American history; Native American and Indigenous Studies; settler colonialism; histories of race; sovereignty; cultural history. 

BIOGRAPHY

Matthew Kruer is a scholar of Indigeneity and settler colonialism, spanning from early modern North America and the Caribbean to the modern movement to colonize other planets. He holds a master’s degree in history from the University of Oregon and a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania. 

Kruer’s first book, Time of Anarchy: Indigenous Power and the Crisis of Colonialism in Early America, examines the tumultuous decade between 1675 and 1685, during which ethnic riots and separatist movements swept through New York, Maryland colonists launched two uprisings, Virginia colonists rebelled against their government, and North Carolina colonists engaged in full-blown revolution. These colonial insurrections were closely connected with a spasm of wars among Indigenous nations ranging from the Great Lakes and the Deep South. Framing this chaotic violence as a single event, which he calls the Time of Anarchy, he shows that these seemingly distinct conflicts were connected by the Susquehannocks, a once-powerful Indigenous nation in what is currently Pennsylvania. Expelled from their homes by colonial militia and scattered across eastern North America, Susquehannocks exerted a political influence wildly disproportionate to their numbers, in the process reshaping both Native nations and English colonies. This book explores the forms of power exercised by seemingly weak and vulnerable Indigenous migrants, who in their struggles for survival and resurgence drove political struggle and social change in early America. Time of Anarchy was awarded the 2024 Philip S. Klein Prize from the Pennsylvania Historical Association. 

Kruer is currently working on two projects. The first explores the idea and practice of sovereignty among Indigenous nations within the early modern British empire and the evolution of British settler colonialism in North America and the Caribbean. The second project is a cultural history of Indigeneity, settler colonialism, and imagined futures on the planet Mars. 

Kruer serves as the University of Chicago’s liaison to the Newberry Consortium in American Indian and Indigenous Studies (NCAIS), which links universities across the United States and Canada engaged in Indigenous Studies. Each year NCAIS holds a Graduate Student Conference, runs a 3-day Spring Workshop and 4-week Summer Institute in research methods, and offers fellowships for faculty and graduate students. Please contact Prof. Kruer for additional information about these opportunities and about Indigenous Studies at the University of Chicago.