Department of History

Professor Fisher grew up in the rolling hills of southeastern Pennsylvania. He received his doctorate from Harvard University in 2008 and joined the Department of History at Brown in the summer of 2009. Professor Fisher's research and teaching relate primarily to the cultural and religious history of colonial America and the Atlantic world, including Native Americans, religion, material culture, and Indian and African slavery and servitude. He is the author of The Indian Great Awakening: Religion and the Shaping of Native Cultures in Early America and co-author of Decoding Roger Williams: The Lost Essay of Rhode Island's Founding Father. Additionally, he has authored over a dozen articles and book chapters and has received research grants from the NEH, the ACLS, and Brown. He is currently finishing a history of Native American enslavement in the English colonies and the United States between Columbus and the American Civil War, tentatively titled America Enslaved: The Rise and Fall of Indian Slavery in the English Atlantic and the United States. He is also the principal investigator of the Stolen Relations: Recovering Stories of Indigenous Enslavement in the Americas project, which seeks to create a public, centralized database of Native slavery throughout the Americas and across time. To make an appointment for office hours, please use this link.