Educational Background

• M.A., 2006, SMU
• Ph.D. 2012, SMU
   

Dissertation Title: “Education on the Edge of Empire: Pueblos and the Federal Boarding Schools, 1880-1930”

Gram's research focuses on the interactions between the Pueblo communities of New Mexico and the Albuquerque and Santa Fe Indian Schools in New Mexico.  Like other Indian schools established during this period, these schools were part of the federal government's campaign to educate and assimilate the native population.  Gram will argue that a study of the Pueblo experience with federal boarding schools deserves attention due to several important factors, including: the limited power and resources that the boarding schools could muster; the confused status of Pueblos in both Anglo law and culture that dominated relations between Pueblos and the schools; the presence of competing institutions, notably Catholic boarding schools; and the nature and structure of Pueblo society and culture, which differed significantly from other Indian groups that also underwent a boarding school experience.  Gram hopes to contribute to larger themes, such as the negotiation and contestation of power, while also establishing the Pueblo experience as something worthy of specific attention in the larger context of the boarding school historiography.