Alexis Guilbault is a historian and term professor at DePaul, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on the land that is now the United States, from the pre-contact era to 1800.
Alexis's current research focuses on unfreedom in the Ohio River Valley, a region that includes Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania. Her work moves beyond the Ohio River's storied reputation as the border between the “free North" and the “slave South" to reveal a longer, more complex history of slavery from precontact to the end of the U.S. Civil War in 1865.
Research & Teaching Interests
- 18th & 19th Century North American/ U.S. history
- Comparative Slavery & Colonization
- Cross-Cultural Relations, particularly Indigenous & Black histories.
- U.S. Midwest & Ohio Valley Regions
Recent Publications
“'You will settle and dispose of them to the most advantage': Colonialism and the Expansion of Native Slavery, 1750-1800," Ohio Valley History, 21 (Dec. 2021), 3-22.