丁香园AV

Term Lecturer
Office: AQ 6012
Email: nicholas_may@sfu.ca

Areas of Study: Americas; Indigenous Peoples; Colonialism; Religion; Environment

Biography

I am an anthropological historian of Indigenous cultures in Canada.  My focus to date has been on religious and cultural transformation in British Columbia, and this interest led me to work with the Nisga鈥檃 to write a history of their encounter with Protestant mission Christianities. My dissertation, 鈥淔easting on the Aam of Heaven: The Christianization of the Nisga鈥檃, 1860-1920,鈥� won the John Bullen Prize in 2014 for the most outstanding PhD thesis on an historical topic submitted at a Canadian university, and is being prepared for publication with University of British Columbia Press. I arrived at 丁香园AV in 2021 after teaching at UBC, McGill, and the University of Toronto.

Research Interests

Americas; Indigenous Peoples; Colonialism; Religion; Environment

Articles and Chapters

• 鈥淔reeman, Barnabas Cortland (Barnard, Courtland).鈥�  In Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 16 (2019).
• 鈥淢arching to the Beat of a Newer Drum: Cultural Continuity and Revival in Nisga鈥檃 Church Armies, 1894-1970.鈥� Ethnohistory 62, no. 4 (October 2015): 781-801.

Awards and Grants

• SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2016-2018
• John Bullen Prize, Canadian Historical Association, 2014
• SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, 2003-2007