Affiliated Departments & Programs
Patrick Gary Bottiger, a native of Minnesota, joined the history faculty in 2013. He holds a doctorate in American history from the University of Oklahoma where he specialized in Indigenous history. Prior to arriving at Kenyon, Bottiger taught at Florida Gulf Coast University and Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Canada. His teaching interests include courses on ancient and early American histories, the histories of Indigenous North America, Red Power and global Indigeneity, histories of wilderness, nature and traditional ecological knowledge, and the history of North American agriculture and farming. In addition, he has taught classes on historical methods and offers a very popular course on the history of corn from its domestication in North America to its global dominance today. In the spring of 2020, Kenyon College awarded Bottiger the Trustee Teaching Award.
Bottiger's work has appeared in the Journal of the Early Republic, the Journal of Agricultural History and other scholarly periodicals. He has held long-term fellowships at the Newberry Library and the Massachusetts Historical Society, and short-term fellowships at the William L. Clements Library, the Filson Society, and participated in the Boston Summer Seminar and an NEH Summer Seminar on the problems of governance in the early republic. His first book, "Borderland of Fear: Prophetstown, Vincennes, and the Invasion of the Miami Homeland," examines how ethnic factionalism and lies precipitated violence in the Ohio River Valley at the turn of the nineteenth century.
When not in his office in Gambier, Bottiger can be found road biking or traversing the backcountry of Glacier National Park or many of the other fantastic national parks throughout the United States. If asked, he will tell students about the time when two wolves pursued him on the rocky wilds of Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior. He was lucky enough to video some of this encounter, which was eventually purchased and included in a show on Animal Planet.
Patrick also spends a great deal of time outside in the fields at Kenyon Farm and in his garden plots in Mount Vernon facilitating project plantings about Indigenous agriculture and Traditional Ecological Knowledge. As director of the Three Sisters Project, Bottiger introduces students and the wider community to the environmental humanities by using historical farming methods and scholarship to research and teach about the cultural and environmental contexts shaping agricultural knowledge systems.
Areas of Expertise
History of North American Indigenous Peoples; Ancient America; the American Revolution and Ohio Valley; the History of Three Sisters polyculture farming; Red Power and Indigenous Activism; Agricultural History and Corn
Education
2009 — Doctor of Philosophy from University of Oklahoma
2003 — Master of Arts from University of Wisconsin-Eau Cl
2001 — Bachelor of Arts from St. John's University
Courses Recently Taught
This course is the same as HIST 101D. This course must be taken as HIST 101D to count toward the social science diversification requirement. The purpose of this course is to introduce students to United States history from the 12th century to the mid-19th century. Students will gain a more developed understanding of American history by examining the interactions among diverse cultures and people; the formation and use of power structures and institutions throughout the Colonial, Revolutionary and Antebellum eras; and the processes behind the "Americanization" of the North American continent. Central to this course is a comparison between two interpretations of American history: a Whiggish, or great American history, and the more conflict-centered Progressive interpretation. Not only will students gain a general knowledge of this time period, they also will understand the ways in which the past can be contextualized. Students are expected to understand both the factual basis of American history as well as the general interpretive frameworks underlying historical arguments. This counts toward the history requirement for the major. No prerequisite.
This course is the same as AMST 101D. This course must be taken as HIST 101D to count toward the social science requirement. The purpose of this course is to introduce students to United States history from the 12th century to the mid-19th century. Students gain a more developed understanding of American history by examining the interactions among diverse cultures and people; the formation and use of power structures and institutions throughout the colonial, Revolutionary and antebellum eras; and the processes behind the "Americanization" of the North American continent. Central to this course is a comparison between two interpretations of American history: a Whiggish, or great American history, and the more conflict-centered Progressive interpretation. Students not only gain a general knowledge of this time period, but also understand the ways in which the past can be contextualized. Students are expected to understand both the factual basis of American history and the general interpretive frameworks underlying historical arguments. This counts toward the premodern and Europe/Americas requirements for the major. No prerequisite.
This course is the same as AMST 102D. This must be taken as HIST 102D to count toward the social science requirement. This course is a thematic survey of the United States from the end of the Civil War to the present. Students examine the transformation of the United States from a rural, largely Protestant society into a powerful and culturally diverse urban/industrial nation. Topics include constitutional developments, the formation of a national economy, urbanization and immigration. The course also discusses political changes, the secularization of public culture, the formation of the welfare state, World War I, World War II, the Cold War and the Vietnam War as well as suburbanization, the civil rights movement, women's and gay rights, and the late 20th-century conservative politics movement and religious revival. This counts toward the modern and Europe/Americas requirements for the major. No prerequisite.
This course surveys American Indian experience in North America from pre-Columbian America to the contemporary moment by "facing east from Indian country" in order to situate Indians’ experience within their own worlds, perspectives and values. American Indians were agents of change far more than simply victims of circumstance and oppression. By looking at American Indians as actors, settlers and thinkers, students gain a more nuanced understanding of colonialism, expansion, ethnic diversity, hegemony and violence throughout North America. Topics include cultural diversity in pre-Columbian North America, pre- and postcolonial change, cosmology and creation, language, New World identities, slavery and violence, empires, political and spiritual dimensions of accommodation and resistance, borderlands and frontiers, race and removal, the Plains wars, assimilation, Red Power, self-determination, hunting and fishing rights and gaming. This course highlights the fact that American Indians are intimately intertwined with the histories of various European colonial empires, African peoples and the United States, but also that American Indian peoples have distinct histories of their own that remain vibrant and whole to this day. This counts toward the modern and Europe/Americas requirements for the major. No prerequisite.
Special Topic
This course examines the North American West from the early 1800s to the early 20th century. In doing so, it tackles the social, economic and political histories of the American, Canadian and Pacific Wests, as well as the role that the more romanticized American West has played in popular imagination. This course examines traditional historical processes tied to the history of the American West such as the Western in literature and film, the Indian wars, the rise of the cowboy and national parks. This course also takes a transnational approach that examines the history of railroads in North America, policing of the West via the formation of the Canadian Mounties and the Texas Rangers, whaling and cattle ranching in the Pacific West (California and Hawaii), and the environmental histories throughout. This course counts toward the modern and Europe/Americas requirements and the Americas field for the major. No prerequisite. Sophomore standing.
This course evaluates the ways in which North American peoples (Indigenous and not) have evolved through corn from ancient America to the rise of neoliberal food regimes and agribusinesses such as Cargill and Monsanto. At the core of this class is the study of the varying and evolving knowledge systems and ontological frameworks in play as North Americans interacted with one another and established their societies through the cultivation of corn and plants. As Native peoples domesticated corn, they often abandoned more nomadic traditions for sedentary ones in order to cultivate their crops and to feed their growing communities. Such changes ushered in profound transformations among Native communities as social hierarchies developed, new religious practices and cosmologies evolved, and large urban centers such as Tenochtitlan and Cahokia appeared. Corn’s centrality in the lives of North Americans continued even after Europeans, Africans and Asians arrived during the colonial period. Non-Native newcomers became dependent on the crop as it became central to commercial trade, the enslavement of and trade of African peoples and Black Americans, the production of whiskey culture on the frontier, and eventually the rise of urban centers such as Cincinnati and Chicago. By the turn of the 20th century, Americans were dependent on corn not only as a foodstuff, but also as a key component of their capitalist, agrarian and racial identities. Even today, corn remains (in terms of acreage farmed and grain produced) the most predominant crop on Earth. Although scholars traditionally speak of Indigenous peoples as tying their genesis to corn, they often neglect to engage the ways in which non-Natives did the same. This counts toward the modern and Europe/Americas requirement and the women, gender and diversity field for the major. No prerequisite. Sophomore standing.
This seminar is a study of American Indian activism from the late 19th century to the present in order to understand the broader historical context of Red Power. It is designed to look beyond the myth that American Indian activism rode in on the coattails of the 1960s civil rights movement and show that Native and non-Native activists had been fighting and campaigning on behalf of the Indian peoples throughout the entire century. The course highlights the varying methods, intentions, successes and failures of the many American Indian activists and organizations that fought for Indian sovereignty. This counts toward the modern and Europe/Americas requirements for the major. No prerequisite. Sophomore standing.
This course focuses on the conceptual frameworks used by historians and on debates within the profession about the nature of the past and the best way to write about it. The seminar prepares students of history to be productive researchers, insightful readers and effective writers. The seminar is required for history majors and should be completed before the senior year. Open only to sophomores and juniors. This counts toward the practice and theory requirement for the major. Declared history or international studies major only.
This seminar looks at the formation of the American republic, the prerevolutionary causes of the conflict, the revolution itself, the establishment of a new nation, and the writing and ratification of the federal Constitution. The course focuses on political and constitutional issues but also addresses social change, Native Americans, women and slavery. This counts toward the premodern and Europe/Americas requirements for the major. No prerequisite. Sophomore standing.
This course examines the contest among various cultural groups for control of the Great Lakes region of North America from the days of Jacques Cartier’s first voyage in 1534 to the War of 1812 between Great Britain and the United States. Native peoples, French and British settlers, and even African slaves played important roles in creating commercial, Native, imperial and national borderlands within the geographic boundaries of the Great Lakes. From the storied voyageurs who explored vast stretches of the Iroquoian and Algonquian worlds to the British and American warships vying for supremacy on Lake Erie, the cultural and political boundaries of the Great Lakes were in continual flux and under constant negotiation. In order to understand this Great Lakes borderland, we look at the power differentials among the various groups, the patterns of cooperation or noncooperation they adopted, the sources of various cultural misunderstandings, and the strategies for coping that they adopted. This counts toward the premodern\nand Europe/Americas requirements and the colonial/imperial field for the major. No prerequisite. Sophomore standing.
The goal of this course is to give each history major the experience of a sustained, independent research project, including formulating a historical question, considering methods, devising a research strategy, locating and critically evaluating primary and secondary sources, placing evidence in context, shaping an interpretation and presenting documented results. Research topics are selected by students in consultation with the instructor. Classes involve student presentations on various stages of their work and mutual critiques, as well as discussions of issues of common interest, such as methods and bibliography. Open only to senior history majors. This counts toward the senior research seminar requirement for the major. Prerequisite: HIST 387. Offered every fall.
Individual study is available to students who want to pursue a course of reading or complete a focused research project on a topic not regularly offered in the curriculum. This option is restricted to history majors and cannot normally be used to fulfill distribution requirements within the major. To qualify, a student must prepare a proposal in consultation with a member of the history faculty who has suitable expertise and is willing to work with the student over the course of a semester. The two- to three-page proposal should include a statement of the questions to be explored, a preliminary bibliography, a schedule of assignments, a schedule of meetings with the supervising faculty member and a description of grading criteria. The student also should briefly describe prior coursework that particularly qualifies him or her to pursue the project independently. The department chair must approve the proposal. The student should meet regularly with the instructor for at least the equivalent of one hour per week. At a minimum, the amount of work submitted for a grade should approximate that required, on average, in 300- or 400-level history courses. Individual projects will vary, but students should plan to read 200 pages or more a week and to write at least 30 pages over the course of the semester. Students are urged to begin discussion of their proposals with the supervising faculty member and the department chair the semester before they hope to undertake the project. Because students must enroll for individual studies by the end of the seventh class day of each semester, they should begin discussion of the proposed individual study by the semester before, so that there is time to devise the proposal and seek departmental approval. Proposals must be submitted by the third day of classes to the department chair.