Brian DeLay

Associate Professor
Office Hours: 
Monday 9-10 and Tuesday 10-11
3219 Dwinelle
(510) 642-2611
delay@berkeley.edu
Education: 

BA: University of Colorado, Boulder, 1994
MA: Harvard University, 1998
PhD: Harvard University, 2004

 

Curriculum Vitae: 
DeLay, Cal CV.doc
Research Interests: 

US and the World; 19th-century Americas; transnational history; US-Mexico Borderlands; indigenous peoples; the international arms trade

Profile: 

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

Select 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

Select Grants and Fellowships

  • Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, 2013-14'
  • UC Humanities Research Fellowship Grant, 2013-14'
  • UC Berkeley CORE Research Bridging Grant, 2012-14’
  • Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies, 2010-2011
  • Donald T. Harrington Fellowship, UT Austin, 2009-2010 (Declined).
  • University of Colorado Graduate Committee on the Arts and Humanities Research Grant, 2008.
  • American Philosophical Society / British Academy Fellowship, 2008.
  • Junior Faculty Development Award, University of Colorado, 2007.
  • Bill and Rita Clements Research Fellowship for the Study of Southwestern Americana, Full Year, Clements Center, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, 2005-2006.
  • Postdoctoral Fellowship, Full Year, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, 2005-2006 (Declined)
  • Postdoctoral Fellowship, Full Year, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL, 2005-2006 (Declined)
  • Packard Foundation Dissertation Finishing Grant, 2002-2003
  • American Philosophical Society, Philips Fund Grant for Native American Research, 2001

Select Presentations and Invited Talks Since 2007

  • "Marcellus Hartley: The Most Dangerous Man You've Never Heard Of," Organization of American Historians conference, April 2013
  • "Beware the Metanarrative; or, How I Acquired My Resistance to Resistance," Kaplan Lecture, University of Pennsylvania, March 2013
  • "Domestic Dependent Notions: American Indians and the First Few Pages of American Empire," American Studies Association meeting, San Juan, Nov. 2013
  • “Indian History and the History of American Foreign Relations,” Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations annual conference, June 2012
  • “How Not to Arm a State: American Guns and the Mexican National Project, 1810-1920,” Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations annual conference, June 2012
  • “Opportunism, Anxiety, and Idealism: U.S. Impulses during the French Intervention in Mexico,” invited paper at el Simposio Internacional 5 de Mayo de Mexico, Biblioteca Palafoxiana, Puebla, Mexico, May 2012.
  • “How Not to Arm a State: American Guns and the Mexican National Project, 1810-1920,” Organization of American Historians annual conference, April 2012
  • Chair, roundtable on the state of the field in U.S.-Mexico Borderlands History, Organization of American Historians annual conference, April 2012
  • “So Far From God, So Close to the Gun Store: Borderlands Arms Trading and the Travails of Mexican History,” 26th Annual W.P. Whitsett Lecture, USC Northridge, March 2012
  • “War of a Thousand Deserts,” at the Tattered Cover Bookstore, Denver, CO, March 2012
  • “Frontiers, Borderlands, and Transnational History,” presentation at Huntington Library symposium on the Significance of the Frontier in an Age of Transnational History, Feb. 2012 [Audio in file#2]
  • “Sailing Backwards on Mexico’s ‘Iron River of Guns’: The Political Economy of the Arms Trade in the 19th and 21st Century’s, Harvard Kennedy School, Feb. 2012
  • “The Drug War and Borderlands History,” Cal Alumni Day, Oct. 2011.
  • “Blood Talk: Violence and Belonging in the Navajo-New Mexican Borderland,” invited paper at Stanford University’s Comparative Wests Seminar, April 2011
  • “Blood Talk: People and Peoples in the Navajo-New Mexican Borderland,” invited talk at UCLA’s American Indian Studies Center, March 2011
  • “Blood Talk: People and Peoples in the Navajo-New Mexican Borderland,” invited talk presentation the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute and the Autry Museum of Western Heritage, March 2011
  • “Patterns of Violence in Navajo-New Mexican Relations,” Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association annual meeting, Santa Clara CA, August 2010
  • “States and Stateless Peoples in George Herring’s From Colony to Superpower,” Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations annual meeting, Madison, WI, June 2010
  • “War of a Thousand Deserts,” invited Keynote Address to the James Rawley Conference in the Humanities, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, April 2011
  • “19th Century Lessons for Today’s Drug War Policies,” History as a Resource for Decision Making, UC Berkeley, March 2010
  • "Comanches in the Cast: Recovering Mexico's 'Eminently National War, 1830-1846," Bancroft Sesquicentennial Symposium, Berkeley, CA, March 2010.
  • “Mexico, Native Polities, and the Continuous 19th Century American Empire,” invited talk for the Harvard Symposium on 19th Century Empire, Cambridge, MA April 2009
  • “War of a Thousand Deserts: How Indians Shaped the Era of the U.S.-Mexican War,” paper presented to the El Paso History Museum, February 2009
  • “Putting Indians into the U.S.-Mexican War,” paper presented at the Organization of American Historians annual meeting, New York, March 2008.
  • “Military History and Non-State Peoples,” roundtable paper presented at the American Historical Association conference, Washington D.C., Jan. 2008.
  • “The French and Indian War,” public talk for the High Plains Chautauqua, Greeley, CO, Aug. 8, 2007
  • “The Comanche Lens: Seeing Nation States through Tribes on the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands,” invited talk at theUniversity of San Diego Trans-Border Institute, April. 2007.
  • “The Comanche Lens: Seeing Nation States through Tribes on the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands,” invited talk at the George and Anne Richards Civil War Era Center, Penn State University, Jan. 2007.
  •  “Independent Indians, the U.S.-Mexican War, and the Reshaping of North America,” paper presented at the American Historical Association conference, Atlanta, GA, Jan. 2007 (*Panel organizer*)
Representative Publications: 

Refereed Publications

Other Publications

Work Forthcoming and in Progress

  • “Shoot the State: Arms, Business, and Freedom in the Americas before Gun Control,” monograph in progress.
  • “Blood Talk: Violence and Belonging in the Navajo-New Mexican Borderland,” chapter in Edward Countryman and Juliana Barr, eds., “Contested Spaces of Early America,” edited collection to be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.
  • “Oportunismo, ansiedad, idealismo: los impulsos Estadunidenses durante la intervención Francesa en México,” chapter in volume on the international dimensions of the French Intervention, edited by Jean Meyer, to be published by the El Colegio de Puebla, Mexico.
  • “Barbarians and Dearer Enemies: Frontier Wars and Federalist Uprisings in Northern Mexico, 1837-1840,” [revised version of chapter six of War of a Thousand Deserts] in Erick D. Langer, ed., “Indians, the State, and the Frontier in Nineteenth-Century Latin America,” edited collection in progress for the University of Nebraska Press.
  • “Opportunity Costs: Comanches between Texas and Mexico, 1836-1846,” chapter accepted by Andrew Frank and Glen Crothers for edited collection on North American borderlands, to be published by Ohio University Press.
  • Interview with Deborah Lawrence and Jon Lawrence for forthcoming book on historians and violence in the Southwest, to be published by the University of Oklahoma Press.

Courses

Semester Course Title Syllabus
Spring 2013 285D.003 America to 1900 Hist 285d, 2013, US to 1900.docx
Fall 2012 7A The United States from Settlement to Civil War
Fall 2012 285D.001 United States
Fall 2012 285U History Beyond Borders
Fall 2011 7A The United States from Settlement to Civil War