Max Flomen

Atlantic World, Borderlands

Teaching Fields

• Early America & the Atlantic World
  
• Native American History
• Borderlands
  

Degrees

• Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles, 2018
• M.A., McGill University, 2011
• B.A., McGill University, 2009

Research Interests

Dr. Flomen is a historian of Early America. His forthcoming monograph, Beyond Mountains: Maroons and Rebellions in the Borderlands of Northern Mexico, 1600-1840 (University of Nebraska Press, 2026) is a history of insurgency that tracks the circulation of anti-colonial epistemologies and practices among the Native nations of the interior. Drawing on archaeology, anthropology, and ethnohistory, Beyond Mountains argues that Chichimecas, Tobosos, Apaches, and Comanches opposed colonial regimes along ideological and spatial axes in ways that convinced non-Indigenous peoples to support this emancipatory counterculture. 

His second, in-progress book project, The Age of Revolutions in the US-Mexico Borderlands, 1760-1830, explores how the anti-slavery radicalism of the Haitian Revolution played out in the trans-Mississippi West, and how Indigenous militancy influenced the Mexican War of Independence. He is also the co-editor of a volume on the history of Indian agents in North America, currently under contract with the University of Oklahoma Press.

At WVU, Dr. Flomen teaches courses on colonialism and empire, and works with graduate students studying Indigenous history, borderlands, the Atlantic World, and the Civil War in the West.

Courses

• HIST 152: US History to 1865
  
• HIST 256: Era of the American Revolution, 1763-1790
• HIST 264: Native American History
• HIST 302: Practicing History
• Hist 393: Atlantic Empires
  
• HIST 441: Colonial America, 17th Century
• HIST 442: Colonial America, 18th Century
• HIST 731: Readings In American History, 1585-1763
• HIST 732: Seminar in American History, 1585-1763

Graduate Students

Ph.D. Students

• John “Jack” Weaver
• Lani Kasten-Coffman

Publications

Books

Beyond Mountains: Maroons and Rebellions in the Borderlands of Northern Mexico, 1600-1840
(University of Nebraska Press, forthcoming 2026). https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9781496244239/beyond-mountains/

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

"The State, Unfreedom, and Emancipation in the Western Borderlands, a Roundtable," with Paul Barba, María Esther Hammack, Naomi Sussman, Vivien Tejada, and Alexandra E. Stern, Journal of the Civil War Era 15, no. 4 (December 2025): 459-492. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/975015/pdf 

"Bad Talks: Rebels, Rumors, and the Politics of Fear in the Gulf Borderlands, 1700s-1760s," in Paul Barba, ed., Gulf South Rebels, Insurgents, and Revolutionaries, 1700-1860: Bonds of Rebellion (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), 23-48. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-82365-7_2

"Apaches y comanches. El limite a la colonizacion de Nueva Espana," Desperta Ferro Historia Moderna no. 68 (February 2024): https://www.despertaferro-ediciones.com/revistas/numero/dragones-de-cuera-salvaje-oest-espanol-noramerica/

“The Long War for Texas: Maroons, Renegades, Warriors, and Alternative Emancipations in the Texas Borderlands, 1835-1845,” Journal of the Civil War Era Volume 11, No. 1 (March 2021): 36-61. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/783006/pdf

Grants and Awards

• David and Dana Dornsife Fellow, Huntington Library, 2026

• Summerfield G. Roberts Fellow, Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University, 2023-2024

• Research Fellowship, Helmerich Center for American Research, 2023

• Short-Term Fellowship, Gilder Lehrman Center for Slavery, Abolition, & Resistance, Yale University, 2022

• William S. Willis, Jr. Research Fellowship, American Philosophical Society, 2022

• William and Madeline Smith Travel Award, Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas-Austin, 2018

• Jack Miller Center Short-Term Fellowship, Newberry Library, 2017

• Carl J. Ekberg Research Grant, Center for French Colonial Studies, 2016