Rate My Professor Linda Clemmons

Linda Clemmons is a Professor of History at Illinois State University in the College of Arts and Sciences. She serves as Director of the Honors Program, having assumed the role permanently on July 1, 2022, after acting as interim director since July 1, 2021. Clemmons is also a faculty member in the Native American Studies program, with her office located in Schroeder Hall 324, and she participates in advising for honors students in History. Additionally, she holds positions on the General Education Program Council and is affiliated with Ethnic Studies. Her research examines 19th-century Dakota history in Minnesota, focusing on Protestant missionary activities among the Dakota starting in the 1830s, the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, the experiences of captives in its aftermath, forced assimilation efforts including boarding schools, and individual stories of cultural resistance and survival.

Clemmons has published three books drawing on primary sources such as handwritten letters and court records from the Minnesota Historical Society. Her first monograph, Conflicted Mission: Faith, Disputes, and Deception on the Dakota Frontier (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2014), explores conflicts and deceptions in early missionary work with the Dakota. Dakota in Exile: The Untold Stories of Captives in the Aftermath of the U.S.-Dakota War (University of Iowa Press, 2019) details how Dakota people endured imprisonment and exile following the war. Unrepentant Dakota Woman: Angelique Renville and the Struggle for Indigenous Identity, 1845-1876 (South Dakota State Historical Society Press, 2023) recounts the life of Angelique Renville, a mixed-ancestry Dakota woman adopted by missionaries Stephen and Mary Riggs, subjected to forced English education, seminary training in Ohio, and unpaid servitude, who later renounced them, reclaimed her Dakota identity, lived in Dakota Territory, and sued unsuccessfully to recover sold land. This book was a finalist for the Western Writers of America Spur Award for Western Biography in 2024. Clemmons has presented her findings at the Department of History Faculty Research Seminar on Native American prisoners of war in 2017 and at the Iowa Historical Society's History Camp on Dakota prisoners' literacy uses.