Title: Associate Professor
Department: History
Email: jojeffers@csudh.edu
Phone: (310) 243-3328
Contact Preference: Any
Native American History, Colonial America, Early American Republic, History of the Midwest, Settler Colonialism, Frontier History, Environmental History
Dr. Jeffers’ current book project, From Ohi’yo to Ohio: Conceptual Landscapes and the Transformation of Ohio Country, 1729-1847, examines how beliefs about the Ohio landscape have shaped its history. Dr. Jeffers has published a number of articles and book chapters, most recently “Colonizing the Indigenous Past: Settler-Colonial Place-Making and the Ancient Landscape of the Early Midwest” in The Making of the Midwest: Essays on the Formation of Midwestern Identity, 1787-1900 (2020), and “From Pipes to Pistols: Blood Run, the Pipestone Trade, and the Eclipse of the Pre-Contact Economy in the Upper Midwest” in Heartland River: A Cultural and Environmental History of the Big Sioux River Valley (2022).
Dr. Jeffers is also working on a state of the field essay on Native American history and the Midwest titled “On Regions Lost and Peoples Found: Native American Historiography and the New Midwestern History,” which will be published in the forthcoming edited collection, Jon Lauck (ed), Hearing the Heartland: Essays on the Plight and Promise of the New Midwestern History (2024).
Ph.D., History, Purdue University
M.A., History, Northern Illinois University
B.A., History and B.A., Philosophy, Ohio State University