Christopher Arris Oakley
Assistant Professor
Ph.D., University of Tennessee
Phone: 252-328-1025
Office: Brewster A202
Fax: 252-328-6788
Email: oakleyc@ecu.edu
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 was Visiting Professor of History at High Point University. Oakley has published scholarly articles in The North Carolina Historical Review, Mississippi Quarterly, and The Journal of the North Carolina Association of Historians. He has also presented papers at a number of professional conferences, including the Southern History Conference, the Western History 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." Oakley offers courses at both the graduate and undergraduate level in North Carolina History, Native American History, and American History.
Selected Publications:
Keeping the Circle: American Indian Identity in Eastern North Carolina, 1885-2004. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005.
“The Legend of Henry Berry Lowry: Strike at the Wind and the Lumbee Indians of Robeson County.” Mississippi Quarterly (Summer 2007).
“Indian Gaming and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.” The North Carolina Historical Review LXXVIII (April 2001): 133-155.
Courses Offered:
HIST 1050: American History To 1877
HIST 1051: American History Since 1877
HIST 3100: North Carolina History
HIST 3170: History of Native Americans
HIST 5135: Problems in North Carolina History
ETHN 4000: Seminar in Ethnic Studies
