Education
PhD, Washington State University, 2021
MA, Central Washington University, 2011
BA, Loyola University Chicago, cum laude, 2001
Academic & Professional
Dr. Ryan W. Booth specializes in the history of the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries up to World War I. His two primary interests are in Indigenous and military history. He regularly teaches the US history survey to 1877, Native American history, US-Indian Wars, and courses for history majors. He is also a faculty member in WSU’s Native Programs and teaches a special course for the Tribal Nation Building Program, which focuses on training future tribal leaders. In 2019-2020, Dr. Booth served as a Fulbrigh-Nehru Fellow based in Kolkata, India. Keahu, Dr. Booth’s tribal name, is a member of the Upper Skagit Tribe in Northwest Washington.
Research Interests
Dr. Booth is currently revising his dissertation, “Crossed Arrows: The US Indian Scouts, 1866-1947,” into a monograph. His dissertation explored the military service of two tribes, the Northern Cheyenne & White Mountain Apache, as representative of the complicated story of US Empire, the martial race theory, and military service as a means to greater Indigenous self-sufficiency.
Stemming from some of his earlier interests and connection with the Jesuits, Dr. Booth has been working on a project to research Jesuit Native American Boarding Schools in the Pacific Northwest. This project is part of a larger effort by the US Department of the Interior to examine the historical legacy of the boarding schools and to help identify gravesite locations and student identities within historical archives.
Peer Reviewed Articles:
“‘As So Many Bengal Tigers’: The U.S. Army, Native Scouts, and the Imagined Martial Race of the Southwest” in Journal of Arizona History (Summer 2023)
“Fort Keogh’s Commissary: A Global Market on the Great Plains” in Montana: The Magazine of Western History (Spring 2020)
Reviews:
Raymond Callahan & Daniel Marston, The 1945 Burma Campaign and the Transformation of the British Indian Army, Modern War Studies Series (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2021) in H-Net (https://networks.h-net.org/node/12840/reviews/10246889/booth-callahan-and-marston-1945-burma-campaign-and-transformation)
Nina Sanders, Apsáalooke Women and Warriors (Chicago: Field Museum, 2020-2021) in The Public Historian 43:4 (November 2021): 93-96.
William C. Meadows, The First Code Talkers: Native American Communicators in World War I (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2021) in Journal of Military History 85:3 (July 2021), 823-825.
Jerome A. Greene, January Moon: The Northern Cheyenne Breakout from Fort Robinson, 1878-1879 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2020) in Nebraska History 102:2 (Summer 2021), 99-100.