Last updated: October 16, 2024
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Meet the Mellon Fellows: Dr. Ben Pokross
Dr. Ben Pokross
Yale University
PhD, English
Host Site: Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site
Fellowship Title: Examining the Intersections of Indigenous Collections, Context, and Contemporary Art
Project Description: Dr. Pokross’s research will contextualize objects of Indigenous origin in the Longfellow House’s collection, and advance interpretation of Indigenous history through artist collaboration, digital media, and programming.
Bio:
Dr. Pokross is a literary historian specializing in nineteenth-century American literature, Native American and Indigenous literature, and media studies. His book project, Writing History in the Nineteenth-Century Great Lakes, examines historical writing as it developed between settler and Native communities in the nineteenth century. He received his PhD in English from Yale University in 2023. Most recently, he was the Duane H. King Postdoctoral Fellow at the Helmerich Center for American Research at Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In this position, he collaborated with the Center's librarians and archivists on a project to review the library catalog in order to bring more visibility to Indigenous presence in the rare book collection. His work has been supported by fellowships from the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, the Clements Library at the University of Michigan, the Newberry Library, and the American Philosophical Society.
Tell us about your research interests!
My research is centered around the question of what it meant to write about the past in nineteenth-century America. I seek to recover the prominence of historical writing in this period, reanimating the many formats and genre which tried to give an accurate account of the past. More broadly, I am interested in drawing on methodologies from English, media studies, and book history to recover the vibrancy of non-literary kinds of writing, which I think are just as formally complex and interesting as novels, plays, and poems.
In my book project, I focus especially on the Indigenous history of the Great Lakes region and how it was written about by both Native and non-Native authors. Early American historical writing has often been described as an instrument of Native dispossession, a tool for "writing Indians out of existence," as Jean M. O'Brien argues. But my project shows that Native writers not only penned histories themselves but played a constitutive role in the creation of new forms of representing the past. This not only has consequences for how we imagine the development of historical writing but also, and more importantly, reveals the influence Native people have always had in crafting their own histories.
How does your research connect to the mission of the National Park Service, which serves both parks and communities?
In my research, I'm interested in the ways that people in the nineteenth century told stories about the past. Doing this work has shown me the power that these narratives have, both positive and negative. I am glad to work with an organization like the National Park Service that is committed to being thoughtful about the stories that it tells and that recognizes the responsibility that comes along with stewarding our Nation's history.
What are you most excited about as you begin your fellowship?
I'm excited about collaborating with the staff at the Longfellow House. They put on a wide range of events, including tours, poetry readings, and public talks, and I look forward to helping them bring their ideas to fruition. I am also eager to meet the other postdoctoral fellows and learn from them about different approaches to public history. I've been a part of several interdisciplinary cohorts in the past, and I've always found it incredibly rewarding to learn from scholars with diverse sets of expertise.