Steven HackelSteven Hackel, Ph.D., earned his Bachelor of Arts at Stanford University and his doctorate in American history from Cornell University with specializations in early America and the American West. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Omohundro Institut of Early American History and Culture and a visiting Assistant Professor at the College of William and Mary. He is chair and professor of history at University of California Riverside. Within the larger field of early American history, Dr. Hackel’s research specializes on the Spanish Borderlands, colonial California, and Native Californians. He is especially interested in Native responses to Spanish colonialism, the effects of disease on colonial encounters, and new ways of visualizing these processes through digital history. His first book, Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis: Indian-Spanish Relations in Colonial California, 1769-1850 (Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2005), garnered numerous national prizes. Junipero Serra: California's Founding Father (Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2013) was named a top ten book by Zócalo Public Square and the best book of the year on early California by the Historical Society of Southern California. Dr. Hackel has edited two volumes of essays and published nearly two dozen scholarly essays. He has also been awarded fellowships from National Endowment for the Humanities and many other agencies and is a speaker with the Organization of American Historians’ Distinguished Lectureship Program. Read More Read Less