Rate My Professor Nicolas Rosenthal

Nicolas Rosenthal is the Chair and Professor of History at Loyola Marymount University, where he has been a faculty member since 2006. He specializes in Indigenous history, with research interests encompassing environmental history, the history of the North American West, and twentieth-century United States history. Rosenthal earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2005, Master’s degree in History from the University of Oregon in 2000, and Bachelor’s degree in History from the University of Oregon in 1997, graduating summa cum laude and elected to Phi Beta Kappa. His career at LMU progressed from Assistant Professor (2006-2012) to Associate Professor (2012-2021) and Professor in 2021. He has held visiting positions, including Visiting Professor of American Indian Studies at UCLA in Spring 2024 and Visiting Associate Researcher in American Indian Studies at UCLA during 2014-15, as well as a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of California Humanities Research Institute in 2005-06.

Rosenthal is the author of Reimagining Indian Country: Native American Migration and Identity in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2012 as part of the First Peoples: New Directions in Indigenous Studies series. His second monograph, Painting Native America, was published by the University of Nebraska Press. He has published peer-reviewed articles including “Native Americans and Cities” in American History: Oxford Research Encyclopedias (2015), “Representing Indians: Native American Actors on Hollywood’s Frontier” in the Western Historical Quarterly (2005), which won the Bert M. Fireman Prize, and “Repositioning Indianness: Native American Organizations in Portland, Oregon, 1959-1975” in the Pacific Historical Review (2002), recipient of the W. Turrentine Jackson Article Prize. Additional contributions include book chapters such as “At the Center of Indian Country: Native Americans and California in the Twentieth Century” (2008), encyclopedia entries, and over a dozen book reviews in leading journals. Rosenthal has received numerous awards and fellowships, such as the John Topham and Susan Redd Butler Off-Campus Faculty Research Award (2013-14), Regional Residency Fellowship from the National Archives (2013-14), First Peoples Publishing Initiative Grant (2010), Kevin Starr Postdoctoral Fellowship (2005-06), Pre-Doctoral Fellowship in Ethnic Studies from UCLA (2003-2004), Short-Term Fellowship from the Newberry Library (2003-2004), and Phillips Fund Grant from the American Philosophical Society (2003-2004). His scholarship illuminates the experiences of Native Americans in urban environments and their cultural adaptations in the twentieth century.