Fay Yarbrough

Fay Yarbrough is the Senior Associate Dean of Faculty and Graduate Programs and William Gaines Twyman Professor of History at Rice University's School of Humanities. She specializes in 19th-century Native populations of the U.S. Southeast and Indian Territory, focusing on Indigenous-African diaspora interactions. Her research examines tribal sovereignty, race formation, and gender through legal frameworks and colonial dynamics.

Education: PhD (Emory University), MA (Emory University), BA (Rice University). Teaches courses on Civil War history, Native history, African American history, and gender studies.

Key works include Race and the Cherokee Nation (2008), Choctaw Confederates (2021), and co-edited Gender and Sexuality in the Indigenous Americas (2011). Explores topics like Cherokee marriage laws, Choctaw Civil War participation, and colonial gender manipulation.

Affiliated with Rice's Center for the Study of Women, Gender & Sexuality and Center for African & African American Studies. Active in promoting interdisciplinary research on race, Indigenous sovereignty, and gender in historical contexts.