Paul Kelton

Bio:

By placing the spread of disease within the large-scale context of social disruption, structural violence, and human trafficking, Kelton’s historical research has contemporary relevance to debates over global health disparities and emerging infectious diseases. His most recent book, Hidden Terrors: The Scourge of Cholera in Jackson’s America (Oxford, 2026), is the first comprehensive history of the cholera pandemic that swept the United States in the 1830s. In his previous work, he examined the biological processes involved in the European takeover of the Americas in two books and an edited volume: Epidemics and Enslavement: Biological Catastrophe in the Native Southeast, 1492-1715; Cherokee Medicine, Colonial Germs: An Indigenous Nation’s Fight against Smallpox, 1518-1824; and Beyond Germs: Native Depopulation in North America. His peer reviewed articles have appeared in Ethnohistory, William and Mary Quarterly, Journal of American History, Journal of Southern History, and The Journal of the European Society for the History of Science.  He holds a BA from the University of Tulsa (1992) and a PhD in History from the University of Oklahoma (1998), and in 2024 he received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship. He continues his research on infectious diseases as historical agents and teaches a range of courses on Indigenous Peoples of North America, Pandemics, Global History of Human Health, and Early America.