Michael Albani

Michael J. Albani is a PhD Candidate at Michigan State University who holds an MA in History from Loyola University Chicago and a BA in History and English from Albion College. He specializes in the study of U.S. history, Native American history, and women’s and gender history, and his dissertation, tentatively titled "Racializing Indigenous Society: Native Americans, Euro-Americans, and the Struggle for Authority in the Great Lakes Borderlands, 1763-1888," centers on the persistence of Anishinaabe women and their children of mixed heritage from Michilimackinac. Conceptions of race and perceptions of people with Indigenous ancestry drastically changed as Euro-American newcomers encroached upon this space. Albani's project analyzes how the enduring presence of Anishinaabe women at peripheries like Michilimackinac affected nineteenth-century state formation efforts on both sides of the border between the U.S. and Canada. Furthermore, it examines how people of mixed heritage retained authority throughout the Great Lakes region as Euro-Americans imposed new racial classifications upon them. He has managed several digital humanities projects at MSU and LUC, and will be a 2020-2021 Cultural Heritage Informatics Graduate Fellow.