Phone: 227-2735
McKee 222-A
smabram@email.wcu.edu

Susan M. Abram received her Ph.D. from Auburn University in 2009 after earning her B.S. and M.A. from Western Carolina University. Arriving at Auburn from her home in the Smoky Mountains, Abram majored in Early American History with minor fields in Modern World History (colonization/decolonization) and Modern American History.

Abram's current book manuscript is “Souls in the Treetops: Cherokee Masculinity, War, and Community, 1760-1820.”  She has presented papers at numerous conferences, including the Georgia Association of Historians, American Society for Ethnohistory, Southern Historical Association, and Horseshoe Bend National Military Park. Her research interests focus on Southern History (Appalachian and Southeastern Indians), environmental history, and colonization/decolonization (including Africa).

This winter, Abram's essay, "The Cherokee Beloved Occupation: Warfare, Gender, and Community," will appear in New Men: Essays on Manliness in Early America, ed. by Thomas A. Foster (New York University Press).  In addition, she has contributed a chapter, "The Cherokees in the Creek War," to the forthcoming The Creek War and the War of 1812 in Alabama, ed. by Kathryn H. Braund (University of Alabama Press).  Her most recent book reviews appear in the July 2010 Alabama Review and Fall 2009 Ethnohistory.

Abram has received multiple awards, including the Marguerite Scharnagel Dissertation Writing Fellowship and has served as an Article Referee for The Alabama Review and worked for the new online Encyclopedia of Alabama where she authored, "The Cherokees in Alabama."  Susan and her husband Michael own the Cherokee Heritage Museum and Gallery in Cherokee, NC, and have two children, five grandchildren, and a miniature long-hair dachshund.   

Courses Taught:

• HIST 142: American Lives: History Through Biographies
• HIST 141: Turning Points in American History
• HIST 151: Turning Points in European History
• HIST 341: North Carolina History