Erika M. Bsumek

Erika M. Bsumek serves as the Ellen Clarke Temple Chair in the History of Women and Professor of History at The University of Texas at Austin's College of Liberal Arts, Department of History. Her distinguished career spans over two decades at UT Austin since 2002, with significant contributions to multiple academic domains.

Her research focuses on Native American history, environmental history, digital history methodologies, and the history of the U.S. West. Bsumek's work uniquely intersects Indigenous studies with infrastructure analysis, examining how large-scale projects like dams and highways transformed both landscapes and social structures. She pioneers digital pedagogy through ClioVis, a timeline and network mapping software serving over 28,000 students, and leads the Radical Hope Syllabus Project addressing environmental history and climate change.

Bsumek's publications reveal evolving scholarly trajectories from Indigenous material culture (Indian-made) to global environmental frameworks (Nation States and the Global Environment) and finally to critical infrastructure studies (The Foundations of Glen Canyon Dam). Her 2023 monograph reframes dam construction as 'infrastructures of dispossession,' demonstrating how Glen Canyon Dam relied on Indigenous knowledge while dispossessing communities.

• UT System Academy of Distinguished Teachers (2024)
• Best Indigenous Studies Award, Mormon History Association (2024)
• Regent's Outstanding Teaching Award (2018)
• New Mexico Book Award (2010)
• Ralph Emerson Twitchell Award (2009)

Bsumek actively bridges academia and public discourse through op-eds in Time, Austin American-Statesman, and Huffington Post. She teaches core courses including Native American Histories, Building America, and The Land Before US, while mentoring students through innovative digital history projects. Her current research examines 'The Concrete West'—analyzing how dams, highways, and cities reshaped Western society—and develops a biography of Rose Daniels, a Navajo woman navigating Ute enslavement and settler colonialism.