About

Matthew Dennis is Professor of History and Environmental Studies Emeritus at the University of Oregon. His books include Cultivating a Landscape of Peace: Iroquois-European Encounters in 17th-Century America (Cornell University Press, 1993); Red, White, and Blue Letter Days: An American Calendar (Cornell University Press, 2002); Riot and Revelry in Early America (Penn State University Press, 2002; co-editor); Encyclopedia of Holidays and Celebrations, 3 vols. (Facts on File, 2006; general editor); Seneca Possessed: Indians, Witchcraft, and Power in the Early American Republic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010); American Relics and the Politics of Public Memory (University of Massachusetts Press, 2023); and American Blood: A History of Spectacle and Power (University of California Press, 2027).

Matthew Dennis received a PhD degree in history from the University of California, Berkeley in 1986, and he has taught there, at UC-Riverside, the University of Oregon, and as a visiting professor (maître de conférennces invité) à l’Université Paris VII—Denis Diderot, Institut d’anglais Charles V. He has been the recipient of major grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities; the Rockefeller Foundation and the Newberry Library; the Huntington Library; The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and Yale University; the Massachusetts Historical Society; and the Bard Graduate Center for Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture. His Cultivating a Landscape of Peace won the New York State Historical Association Manuscript Award and the Erminie Wheeler-Vogel Prize from the American Society for Ethnohistory.

Matthew Dennis has published articles and essays in various scholarly books, journals, and encyclopedias, as well as shorter pieces in popular periodicals and online, including the Washington Post, Time, OAH Magazine of History, Commonplace, History News Network, the Conversation, the Arizona Republic, the Oregonian, and Eugene (OR) Register-Guard. He has frequently appeared as a historical commentator in documentary films and on local, regional, and national radio and television, including MSNBC, CBS News, National Public Radio, Oregon Public Broadcasting, the OAH program Talking History, and the History Channel. And he has been interviewed and quoted on a range of subjects—including early America history and politics, American public holidays and commemoration, death and memorialization in America, and recent monument and de-naming controversies—by various news outlets, including the BBC, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, The Atlantic, Boston Globe, Dallas Chronicle, San Antonio Express-News, Oregonian, Vancouver Sun and Canwest News, Palm Beach Post, Salon, and the Huffington Post.

He lives in New York City.