Jim Axtell died August 29, 2023. Professor emeritus of history and William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Humanities at the College of William and Mary, Axtell pursued significant scholarship on Native American history, ethnohistory, and the history of education over a five-decade career. His best-known book, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (1985), won the Gilbert Chinard Prize (Society for French Historical Studies), the Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Prize (American Society for Ethnohistory), and the Albert B. Corey Prize (American Historical Association-Canadian Historical Association). While earning his Ph.D. at Cambridge, he broke the forty-one-year-old British Universities long jump record and set a new one that would stand for thirty years.
Williamsburg, VA
United States