TTU Home History

Ethan A. Schmidt

Contact Information:

Email: ethan.schmidt@ttu.edu
Office: 133 Holden Hall
Curriculum Vita

Fields:

Atlantic World, Ethnohistory/Native American, Colonial British North America, Revolutionary America, Social History, Baseball

About Dr. Schmidt:

Ethan Schmidt specializes in The Atlantic World, with an emphasis on the interactions between Indigenous People and European Colonists.   He has presented his research at numerous conferences and other venues some of which include the American Society for Ethnohistory, the Mid-America Conference on History and the Hall Center for the Humanities at the University of Kansas.

Dr. Schmidt has published book reviews in American Indian Quarterly, Kansas History, Itinerario and H-AmIndian among others.  His article "The Well-Ordered Commonwealth: Humanism, Utopian Perfectionism and the English Colonization of the Americas" was published by the journal Atlantic Studies in September 2010.  He is currently revising his first book manuscript tentatively titled, “‘For the Destruction of the Indians’”: Social Conflict and Indian Hatred in Seventeenth-Century Virginia” He is also currently revising an article titled “Something For Everyone: The Quebec Act and the Coming of the American Revolution” as well as another titled "Cockacoeske: Weroansqua of the Pamunkey and Indian Resistance in Seventeenth-Century Virginia."  Dr. Schmidt is also working on his second major study, which will synthesize the Native American experience in the American Revolution. That book, tentatively titled “The Greatest Blow that Could Have Been Dealt Us: Native Americans and the American Revolution, is under contract with Greenwood Praeger/ABC-CLIO publishing.  He is also currently busy organizing and editing  a collection of essays titled “When Indians Play Indian.”  In November of 2009, TTU played host to a symposium held in conjunction with that project which is now under contract with the University of Colorado Press.   Dr. Schmidt contributed several articles to the recently published Encyclopedia of US Indian Policy and Law from CQ Press and has recently authored several entries for the reference work Revolts, Protests, Demonstrations, and Rebellions in American History from ABC-CLIO and Mesa Verde.  That work was published in January 2011.

At Texas Tech, Dr. Schmidt won the 2010-2011 President’s Excellence in Teaching Award and has twice been a nominee for the President' s Excellence in Diversity and Equity Award as well as a 2009-2010 nominee for the Spencer-Wells Award for Creativity in Teaching. In 2009, he won an Innovative Teaching Award from the IS 1100 Freshman Seminar Program. While working on his M.A. he received the 2001 Society of Colonial Dames Eastern Kansas Chapter Scholarship, and the 2001 Kansas History Teacher's Association prize for Outstanding Graduate paper. From the University of Kansas he received the Lila Atkinson Creighton Scholarship for Graduate Research twice, the Donald R. McCoy Award for Outstanding Research Paper, the History Department's Outstanding Teaching by a GTA Award, a Preparing Future Faculty Fellowship and a Graduate School Dissertation Fellowship. External awards to his credit include the James Pearson Fellowship from the Kansas Board of Regents, and Eddie Jacobsen Memorial Award and the Sherman and Irene Dreiseszun Award from the Harry Truman Good Neighbor Foundation.

Prior to his Doctoral work at KU, Dr. Schmidt completed his B.A. in History and Political Science at Emporia State University in Emporia, KS in 1998. He earned his M.A. in History there in 2001 as well. Ethan, his wife Elizabeth, and their three children Connor, Dylan, and Brianna are very excited to be a part of the Texas Tech community.

Dr. Schmidt serves on the Faculty Senate, as well as the planning committees for Texas Tech's Native American Summer Bridge Institute and American Indian Month Celebration.  He is also a Fellow of TTU's Institute for Inclusive Excellence.

MA students under his direction have gained admittance to PhD programs at Texas Tech University, the University of Mississippi and the College of William and Mary.  He welcomes any students interested in studying with him to contact him via email.