Dmitri Brown joined the History Department this fall, as one of the newest member of our faculty. Brown is a historian of Native North America, with a specialization in the twentieth century. He earned his PhD in History at UC Davis and then spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan’s Society of Fellows.
Brown’s first book project explores the Tewa Pueblos at the dawn of atomic modernity. In late 1942, the leaders of the Manhattan Project decided to build a secret weapons laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, on ancestral lands of the Tewa Pueblos (San Ildefonso, Ohkay Owingeh, Tesuque, Nambé, Pojoaque, and Santa Clara). Residents of the six Pueblos, including members of Brown’s family, came to work on the project in various laboring roles. They also hosted physicists and their families in their plazas and homes on numerous occasions. Brown brilliantly seizes upon these intersections to interrogate Tewa engagement with western modernity, and to reframe the advent of the atomic age through the lens of Tewa cosmology.
“I remember visiting Berkeley as a child with my family,” Brown says. “Berkely was my dad's alma mater. My sister and I were playing on the steps north of Dwinelle that lead down to the Life Sciences Building. My dad told me, ‘Maybe you'll end up here some day.’ He surely meant as a student, but the fact that I'm here now as an assistant professor makes that memory very sweet. I look forward to teaching classes on U.S. social, cultural, intellectual, and Indigenous history as well exploring Berkeley's specific role within the field of nuclear colonialism. The students here are amazing, and I'm grateful to new colleagues and department staff for their support and advice.”