Darren Reid

My core research is concerned with the role played by violence in the shaping of early American society and its role in the creation Native American ‘Otherness’.  As a historian, I am particularly interested in violence as a formative source - rather than a cumulative effect produced by other social or economic forces, I instead prefer to study violence as a starting point for new event-chains.  This has led to me develop a particular interest in the transmission of ideas and war-traumas from one generation to the next, and the specific mechanism which allow conflict-experience to be canonised, reproduced, passed-on, and, in some cases, commercialised.

My secondary research builds upon this.  Discourses of race and gender in popular mediums, such as films and comic books, are another important aspect of my research and publication portfolio.  In addition to writing on the history of violence in Native America, I have researched and published on the history of silent film, the theatre, and public appetites for performance and comedy as a form of cultural commentary.

I am also very interested in using non-traditional mediums to disseminate my research.  Aside from the written word, I have experimented with trans-media articles (open access pieces which include filmic elements, audio commentaries, and digital appendices), podcasts, micro-blogging, filmmaking, and immersive content creation.  These works range from academic in nature (aimed at a scholarly audience) to public outreach, wherein accessibility is an important consideration.