Photo credits:
Sarah Thorén
Benjamin Madley
Associate Professor of History, University of California, Los Angeles
Benjamin Madley holds a BA in History from Yale University, an MSt in History from the University of
Oxford, and a PhD in History from Yale. He was an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Dartmouth
College before he joined the faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Madley is the author of more than a dozen book chapters and articles. His essays have appeared in four
edited volumes
as well as journals, including The American Historical Review, European History Quarterly,
the Pacific
Historical Review, and the Journal of Genocide Research.
Yale University Press published his first book, An American Genocide: The United States and the California
Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873. It received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History, the Raphael Lemkin
Book Award from the Institute for the Study of Genocide, the Charles Redd Center/Phi Alpha Theta Award for
the Best Book on the American West, the California Book Awards Gold Medal for Californiana, the Heyday
Books History Award, and the Norman Neuerburg Award from the Historical Society of Southern California. It
was also named a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, an Indian Country Today Hot List book, a Caro-
line Bancroft History Prize Honor Book, and a Choice magazine Outstanding Academic Title. True West Magazine
named Madley the Best New Western Author of 2016. In 2018, he received the California Commendation Medal
from the Military Department of the State of California. According to California Governor Jerry Brown, “Madley
corrects the record with his gripping story of what really happened: the actual genocide of a vibrant civilization,
thousands of years in the making.”
At SCAS, Madley will be working on a book about Native American miners in the California gold rush.
This information is accurate as of the academic year 2018-19.