Rate My Professor John Bowes

Dr. John Bowes is the Associate Dean of the College of Letters, Arts, and Social Sciences at Eastern Kentucky University, where he also holds a faculty position in the History Department. A specialist in Native American history and the history of the American West, Bowes earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2003, an M.A. from the same institution in 1999, and a B.A. in History from Yale University in 1995, graduating cum laude with Distinction in History. He joined Eastern Kentucky University in 2006 as an Assistant Professor of History, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2011, and has served in various leadership roles, including Chair of the Department of History, Philosophy, and Religious Studies and interim dean positions. Prior to EKU, he was the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Native American Studies at Dartmouth College from 2004 to 2006 and a Lecturer at UCLA in 2004.

Bowes's scholarly work centers on Native American removal and adaptation in the nineteenth century. His books include Land Too Good for Indians: Northern Indian Removal (2016), Exiles and Pioneers: Eastern Indians in the Trans-Mississippi West (Cambridge University Press, 2007), The History and Culture of Native Americans: The Choctaw (Chelsea House Publishers, 2010), The Trail of Tears: Removal in the South (Chelsea House Publishers, 2007), and Black Hawk and the War of 1832: Removal in the North (Chelsea House Publishers, 2007). He has published articles such as “Transformation and Transition: American Indians and the War of 1812 in the Lower Great Lakes” in The Journal of Military History (2012) and “The Lands of My Nation: Delaware Indians in Kansas, 1829-1869” in Great Plains Quarterly (2016), as well as chapters in the Oxford Handbook of American Indian History (2016) and other edited volumes. Bowes has received the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend (2010), Eastern Kentucky University’s Excellence in Research and Creative Activities Award (2010-2011), and research grants from the American Philosophical Society (2011) and EKU. His service includes serving as Book Review Editor for Ethnohistory, Commissioner on the Kentucky Native American Heritage Commission since 2008, and expert witness for Native American tribes.