Gregory D. Smithers

Smithers is the author of numerous historical books, many of which focus on Native American and African American histories. In a 2022 interview with the Bay Area Reporter, Smithers said that he is "attracted to topics most other historians have historically not touched, or handled pretty shabbily."

In 2022, he published an interdisciplinary history of two-spirit identity entitled Reclaiming Two-Spirits: Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal & Sovereignty in Native America. In addition to his writings, Smithers also produced a digital history in 2022 entitled "Cherokee Riverkeepers." Completed in partnership with the Digital Humanities Institute at the University of Sheffield, "Cherokee Riverkeepers" includes an interactive map that uses the Cherokee language to understand the historical significance of rivers in Southern Appalachia.

Born in Sydney, Australia, Smithers received degrees from the Australian Catholic University and the University of California, Davis. In 2019 he was awarded a British Academy Global Professorship for his work on Indigenous environmental history in the United States and Australia.

Smithers published Native Southerners: Indigenous History from Origins to Removal, a monograph on Native Americans in the southeastern United States, in 2019.

His 2015 book The Cherokee Diaspora: An Indigenous History of Migration, Resettlement, and Identity about the Indian Removal Act's impact on the Cherokee Nation's history. The book won a gold medal in the multicultural nonfiction category of the Independent Publisher Book Awards.

In 2012, he published Slave Breeding: Sex, Violence, and Memory in African American History which addressed the history of slave breeding and the sexual abuse of slaves in the United States. In the book, Smithers also explores the historical memory of slave breeding in the African American community, and its impact on the sexual objectification of black people in contemporary culture. The book was praised for presenting multiple viewpoints by including a diverse set of sources. However, it received some criticism for conflating slave breeding with other types of abuse and the separation of enslaved families.

Gregory D. Smithers (born 1974) is a professor of American history at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. An ethnohistorian, Smithers specializes in Native American and African American histories.