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CORVALLIS, Ore. - Brian DeLay, a scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, will speak on "Indians and the U.S.-Mexican War," Thursday, Jan. 20, at Oregon State University.

The event, which begins at 4 p.m. in the Memorial Union Journey Room, is the second lecture in the 2010-11 American Culture & Politics speaker series.

For more than 150 years, historians written about the U.S.-Mexican War with little mention of the indigenous people who actually controlled the territory that the two countries came to blows over. This talk will explore the many ways in which Indian people and their politics shaped the course and outcome of 19th-century North America's defining international conflict.

DeLay is an associate professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley who writes about connections between indigenous peoples and the histories of American nation states. His articles have appeared in The American Historical Review, The Journal of the Early Republic, and The Chronicle Review. His book "War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War" (Yale, 2008) won prizes from several organizations, including the Western History Association, the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, and the Latin American Studies Association.

DeLay has been appointed a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians for 2008-2011, and was recently profiled as a "Top Young Historian" by the History News Network. He is working on a book manuscript titled "Shoot the State: The Arms Trade and the Re-Creation of the Americas, 1750-1910."

This American Culture & Politics speaker series is sponsored by the Horning Endowment in the Humanities. For more information, contact the History Department at 541-737-8560 or visit www.oregonstate.edu/cla/history.