Assistant Professor
U.S., Cultural, Public, and American Indian History
B.A. Emory University; M.A. University of Arizona; Ph.D. University of Texas
at Austin, 2004.
Professor Troutman received his master’s degree in American Indian
Studies at the University of Arizona, and his doctorate in history from
the University of Texas at Austin. His research and teaching interests
include multiple facets of American Indian history as well as studies
of race, culture, and music in the United States in the twentieth century.
Before his appointment as assistant professor at UL Lafayette, he was
the 2006-2007 Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Wesleyan University’s
Center for the Americas in Middletown, Connecticut. Prior to that, he
served as Assistant Director of the Newberry Library’s D’Arcy
McNickle Center for American Indian History in Chicago.
His first book, Indian Blues: American Indians and the Politics of Music, 1890-1934,
was published in the spring of 2009 by the University of Oklahoma Press. He has
published articles and book reviews in numerous journals, including Ethnohistory,
Western Historical Quarterly, Louisiana History Journal and Museum Anthropology,
and his essays are featured in a number of edited volumes and other works, including
Beyond Red Power: New Perspectives on Twentieth-Century American Indian Politics
(School of American Research Press, 2007), Te Ata, Chickasaw Storyteller (University
of Oklahoma Press, 2002), Selling the Indian: Commercialization and the Appropriation
of Indian Culture in the Twentieth Century (The University of Arizona Press,
2001), and Away From Home: American Indian Boarding School Experiences (The Heard
Museum, 2000). He has presented and provided guest comments on panels for national
conferences, including meetings for the American Society for Ethnohistory, American
Studies Association, Organization of American Historians, the Native American
and Indigenous Studies Association, and the Western History Association.
Professor Troutman received a Smithsonian Postdoctoral Fellowship in
2008 to conduct research for his second book, which is a cultural history
of the Hawaiian steel guitar. In the fall of 2009 he published an article
featured in the journal Southern Cultures entitled, “The Music
of Pura Fé: Blues Power in the Tuscarora Homeland.” When
not writing about music, he is often playing it, and has toured extensively
the United States and Europe as a lead guitarist and pedal steel guitarist
for numerous bands that never hit the big time but had a lot of fun along
the way.
Early Reviews and Accolades for Indian Blues:
While it is incredibly rare for an author's first published work to be
of great significance, Troutman (Univ. of Louisiana, Lafayette) has done
exactly that with this most imaginative and intellectually original book…[Troutman]
enlightens and engages readers with great storytelling buttressed by
a masterful command of subject… [He] delivers a riveting analysis
of the interplay between the complex politics of powwows and the powerful
forms of performance art that are the centerpieces of the gatherings…Summing
Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. – Choice
"John Troutman brilliantly explores the emergence of a new world
of Native music and dance in the early 1900s. Long awaited and well worth
the wait, this book makes a major contribution to the literature on twentieth-century
politics and culture." PHILIP J. DELORIA, author of Playing Indian
"
Dramatically deepening what we know about the role of music as a form
of resistance, this imaginatively conceived and carefully researched
book will change the way we think about music, Indian, and identity.
Indian Blues is first-rate scholarship." CLYDE ELLIS, author of
A Dancing People: Powwow Culture on the Southern Plains
"
By expanding our understanding of the politics in American Indian powwows,
and pageants, John Troutman-like George Moses, Clyde Ellis, and Philip
Deloria-asks us to think more deeply about expressive culture. Indian
Blues is a comprehensive, sensitive, and probing portrayal of Native
adaption and resistance." BRIAN HOSMER, author of American Indians
in the Marketplace
"
Listen to Indian Blues for an unexpected history of Native identity,
modernity, agency, and resistance. Troutman persuades us all that, indeed,
`music matters.'" RAYNA GREEN, National Museum of American History
