Robert O. Smith

Robert O. Smith (Chickasaw) is Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Texas, specializing in religious history, Indigenous studies, and critical race studies. Smith, an enrolled citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, is ordained as a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). In addition to many academic articles, he is the author of More Desired than Our Owne Salvation: The Roots of Christian Zionism (Oxford, 2013) and editor, with Göran Gunner, of Comprehending Christian Zionism: Perspectives in Comparison (Fortress, 2014). Currently, is co-researching and -writing three book-length projects on the movement and discipline critical race theory under contract with New York University Press, the University of California Press, and Penn State University Press. Smith and noted rhetoric and writing studies specialist Aja Y. Martinez draw on mixed methods, ranging from archival, to ethnographic, to literary and rhetorical analysis, to re-tell the stories of CRT’s origins within the broader scope of US history.