Brian DeLay
Associate Professor
Contact
Office: Dwinelle 3219
Hours: Tu 11-12, Th 8:15-9:15
Phone: (510) 642-2611
Email: delay@berkeley.edu
Education
BA: University of Colorado, Boulder, 1994
MA: Harvard University, 1998
PhD: Harvard University, 2004
Curriculum Vitae
Download and view CV in PDF format.
Employment
Associate Professor, University of California, Berkeley, 2010-Present
Assistant Professor, University of California, Berkeley, 2009-2010
Assistant Professor, University of Colorado, Boulder, 2004-2009
Lecturer, Harvard University, Spring 2004
Interests
US and the World; 19th-century Americas; transnational history; US-Mexico
Borderlands; native peoples; the international arms trade
Publications and Research
War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008 [paperback, 2009].
“Independent Indians and the U.S.-Mexican War,” American Historical Review 112 (Feb., 2007), 35-68. [To be reprinted in Benjamin H. Johnson and Pekka Hämäläinen, eds., Major Problems in Borderlands History, Wadsworth, forthcoming.]
“The Wider World of the Handsome Man: Southern Plains Indians Invade Mexico, 1830-1846,” Journal of the Early Republic 27 (March, 2007), 83-113.
Co-author with James West Davidson, William E. Gienapp, Christine Leigh Heyrman, Mark H. Lytle, and Michael B. Stoff, Experience History: Interpreting America’s Past [Formerly Nation of Nations: A Narrative History of the American Republic], McGraw-Hill (2010). *Concise Edition: US/A History (2009).
Response to Daniel Walker Howe, Andrés Reséndez, Ned Blackhawk, and Leonard Sadosky’s essays in H-SHEAR roundtable on War of a Thousand Deserts, November 2010.
Top Young Historian essay, Historians News Network, October 2010.
“Forgotten Foes,” Berkeley Review of Latin American Studies (Fall 2010), 14-19.
“James Madison and the Scolds,” Review of J. C. A. Stagg, Borderlines in the Borderlands: James Madison and the Spanish American Frontier, 1776-1821, Passport 40:3 (January 2010).
“Why Mexico Fought,” review of Timothy J. Henderson, A Glorious Defeat: Mexico and its War with the United States, Diplomatic History 33:1 (January 2009).
“19th Century Lessons for Today’s Drug War Policies,” The Chronicle Review, Tuesday, July 28, 2009
“It’s Time We Remembered the Role of Indians in the U.S.-Mexican War,” History News Network, 3/9/2009
“War of a Thousand Deserts,” on The Page 99 Test
“Narrative Style and Indian Actors in the Seven Years’ War,” Common-Place: The Interactive Journal of Early American History, 1 (1), September 2000.
Work Forthcoming and in Progress
“Shoot the State: The Arms Trade and the Re-creation of the Americas, 1750-1900,” Book-length study in early development.
“Blood Talk: People and Peoples in the Navajo-New Mexican Borderland,” chapter in revision for Edward Countryman and Juliana Barr, eds., “Contested Spaces of Early America,” edited collection in progress.
“Comanches in the Cast: Remembering Mexico’s ‘Eminently National War,’” essay forthcoming in Charles Faulhaber, ed., “The Bancroft Library at 150: A Sesquicentennial Symposium,” edited collection in progress.
“Barbarians and Dearer Enemies: Frontier Wars and Federalist Uprisings in Northern Mexico, 1837-1840,” chapter accepted by Erick D. Langer, ed., for “Indians, the State, and the Frontier in Nineteenth-Century Latin America,” edited collection in progress.
“Opportunity Costs: Comanches between Texas and Mexico, 1836-1846,” chapter accepted by Andrew Frank and Glen Crothers for edited collection on North American borderlands, in progress.
Selected Awards and Honors
Bryce Wood Book Award for the outstanding book on Latin America in the social sciences and humanities published in English, Latin American Studies Association, 2010
Charles A. Ryskamp Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies, 2010-2011
Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer, 2008-2011
W. Turrentine Jackson Prize for best first book, Western History Association, 2009
Robert M. Utley Book Award, Western History Association, 2009
Southwest Book Award, sponsored by the Border Regional Library Association, 2009
James Broussard Best First Book Prize, Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, 2008
Norris and Carol Hundley Best Book Award, Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association, 2008 [co-winner]
The Sons of the Republic of Texas Summerfield G. Roberts Best Book Award, 2008
Finalist, Francis Parkman Prize from the Society of American Historians, 2008
Bolton-Cutter Award for best borderlands article, Western History Association, 2008
Robert F. Heizer Prize for the best article in the field of ethnohistory, 2008
CLAH Article Prize, Conference on Latin American History, 2008
Stuart Bernath Article Prize, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, 2008.
Phi Alpha Theta/Westerners International Prize for Best Dissertation, 2005
Harold K. Gross Prize from Harvard University for the dissertation “demonstrating the greatest promise of a distinguished career in historical research,” 2004
Courses
History 100.001 - American Encounters (Fall 2009)
History 103D.002 - Borderlands in North America (Fall 2009)
History 101: Borderlands in the Bancroft (Spring 2010)