# Kathleen DuVal

Kathleen DuVal is an American historian, academic, and author. She is a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
DuVal is most known for her work on early American history and is the author of the books Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution and Native Nations: A Millennium in North America, which won the 2025 Bancroft Prize for outstanding works in American history and diplomacy. Her work revolves around Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans on the borderlands of North America and has been featured in newspapers including The New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
DuVal is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship as well as an Elected Fellow of the Society of American Historians and the American Antiquarian Society.

## Education

DuVal completed her Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Stanford University in 1992. In 2001, she completed her Ph.D. in U.S. History from the University of California, Davis.

## Career

DuVal began her academic career in 2001 by joining the University of Pennsylvania as a visiting assistant professor and served until 2003. In the same year, she joined the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she served as assistant professor from 2003 to 2009, and associate professor from 2009 to 2015. As of 2015, she has been professor of history.

## Research

DuVal has authored numerous articles spanning the areas of early American history, particularly focusing on the interactions among Africans, Europeans, and Native Americans, on the borderlands of North America.

### Early American history

DuVal's early American history research has focused on the political, economic, and social factors that shaped the early American colonies and the formation of the United States as a nation. Her book The Native Ground offers an understanding of the complex history of interactions between Native Americans and Europeans. While reviewing the book, Daniel H. Usner said "Kathleen DuVal has produced an ambitious study of a neglected region in early American history, but the significance of her analysis transcends the Arkansas Valley and will influence scholars working in other areas of American Indian and colonial American history". He further commended her efforts in comprehensively mapping out the interconnections between various regions and drawing pertinent analogies, ranging from the Northeast to Mexico, while also placing paramount importance on the portrayal of Indian-to-Indian relations in the narrative.
The book Interpreting a Continent, Voices from Colonial America, which DuVal co-authored with John DuVal, compiled, translated, and interpreted a range of historical documents, shedding light on the multicultural origins of North America's colonies. While addressing the problem of verticality in colonial American voices, her work focused on the translations of sources from early North America by individuals including John Smith and Pontiac, suggesting that translating historical documents requires a dual approach, where translators must navigate through both time and language differences.
In her review of the book West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776 by Claudio Saunt, DuVal called for a broader comprehension of American history that incorporated the histories of diverse groups of people and locations and highlighted that the prevalent focus on British colonies in early American history failed to account for the experiences of other peoples and regions.

### Revolution

DuVal's book Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution offered a new outlook on the Revolutionary War by narrating the conflict from the perspective of marginalized individuals within colonial society. While reviewing this book, American Author Woody Holton, praised its well-supported and convincing narrative, emphasizing the author's efforts in utilizing eight representative characters to portray the varied experiences of diverse contributors to the Gulf Coast gumbo and highlighting lesser-known facets of the American Revolution and drawing attention to the significant roles played by marginalized groups.

## Personal life

Her father is the literary translator John DuVal, with whom she edited the anthology Interpreting a Continent. She is married to Martin Smith, a professor of environmental economics at Duke University.

## Awards and honors

* 2000 – U.C. Davis Humanities Graduate Research Award
* 2001–2003 – Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, McNeil Center for Early American Studies
* 2005 – Junior Faculty Development Award, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
* 2006–2007 – Spray-Randleigh Fellowship, UNC
* 2008–2009 – National Humanities Center Fellowship, National Humanities Center
* 2010–2013 – Abbey Fellowship, College of Arts and Sciences, UNC
* 2016–2021 – Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Professor, UNC
* 2018–2019 – Guggenheim Fellow, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation