Assistant Professor of History
Early American History, History of the American West, and Native American History
Princeton University (PhD, 2008)
Biography
Bill Carter studied history and anthropology at Oberlin College. After graduating, he worked for several years as a curatorial assistant and field archeologist in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In graduate school at Princeton University, he concentrated on early America, Native American history, colonial Latin America, and the history of the American West. In his book manuscript, The Hideous and the Beautiful: The Decorated Body in Iroquoia, 1550-1850, he examines the relationships between bodies, objects, consumer goods and the distinctively Iroquoian ideal of beauty. He is also revising an article, “The Nakedness of the Indians,” in which he explores how European empires imagined Native American bodies and their very different materialities, or ways of being in the material world, and how Native American experiences of and relationships to their bodies were altered by their interactions with European empires and their consumption of goods manufactured in Europe.
Before coming to The College of New Jersey, Bill was a postdoctoral fellow in the Introduction to the Humanities Program at Stanford University, where he taught in a wide range of interdisciplinary humanities courses that drew on art history, literature, anthropology, and history. While still in graduate school, Bill became a certified Power Vinyasa yoga teacher, and he taught several yoga classes a week in the San Francisco Bay Area. He also enjoys spending time with his partner and their two boys, cycling, snowboarding, going to the beach, and cooking vegan meals.