overview

• Christopher Arris Oakley specializes in North Carolina History and Native American History. ; Oakley received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Tennessee in 2002. ; From 2002-03, he served as Assistant Editor for the James K. Polk project in Knoxville, where he worked on Volume X of The Correspondence of James K. Polk. ; From 2003-2005, he wasVisiting Professor of History at High Point University. Oakley has published scholarly articles in The North Carolina Historical Review, Mississippi Quarterly, The Native South, and Southern Cultures. He has also presented papers at a number of professional conferences, includingthe Southern History Conference, the Western History Conference, the Native American Indigenous Studies Conference, and the Ethnohistory Conference. ; In 2005, University of Nebraska Press published Oakley's first book, Keeping the Circle: American Indian Identity in Eastern North Carolina 1885-2004, as part of its Indians of the Southeast series. ; In Keeping the Circle, Oakley “presents an overview of the modern history and identity of the Native peoples in twentieth-century North Carolina, including the Lumbees, the Tuscaroras, the Waccamaw Sioux, the Occaneechis, the Meherrins, the Haliwa-Saponis, and the Coharies." His newest book, New South Indians: Tribal Economics and the Eastern Band ofCherokee Indians in the Twentieth Century, was published by theUniversity of Tennessee Press in 2018. Oakley offers courses at both the graduate and undergraduate level in North Carolina History, Native American History, and American History.