History & Art History

Michael Bottoms studies race, politics, and law in the nineteenth-century American West. He is currently working on a book manuscript, entitled “An Aristocracy of Color,” that examines the effects of federal Reconstruction legislation on race relations in California. He earned his B.A. at the University of California, Berkeley, and his Master’s and Ph.D. at UCLA. He has been a research fellow at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and at the Autry National Center’s Institute for the Study of the American West in Los Angeles, California. Prior to his appointment at George Mason University, Professor Bottoms taught at the University of Puget Sound, Whitman College, and UCLA. He currently teaches courses in race and ethnicity, the history of the American West, environmental history, comparative slavery in the Americas, and violence in American culture.

19th-century US, American West, political, legal, constitutional history