University of Delaware Associate Professor Jessica L. Horton’s book, Earth Diplomacy: Indigenous American Art, Ecological Crisis, and the Cold War was published by Duke University Press in August 2024. The Department of Art History professor examines how Native American artists in the mid-20th century mobilized Indigenous cultures of diplomacy to place the earth at the center of international relations. Their art modeled a radical alternative to dominant forms of statecraft, an approach that Horton terms “earth diplomacy”: a creative response to extractive colonial capitalism that is grounded in Native ideas of deep reciprocal relationships between humans and other beings that govern the world. 

Horton draws on extensive archival research and oral histories as well as analyses of Indigenous paintings, textiles, tipis, adornment and artistic demonstrations. By interweaving diplomacy, ecology and art history, she advances Indigenous frameworks of reciprocity with all beings in the cosmos as a path to transforming our broken system of global politics. In February, Horton celebrated her book with a talk at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, where her research began during a postdoctoral fellowship jointly hosted by the National Museum of the American Indian in 2013–2014.

Also in 2024, Horton spent a wonderful yearlong sabbatical developing new projects on California Indigenous weaving, fire ecologies and environmental futures. She served in a Huntington Library Fellowship, visited the Yosemite National Park archives and collaborated with the Pomo Weavers Society to lead a field study with UD graduate students in 2025 and a related exhibition in Mechanical Hall Gallery in 2027. She also leveled up as a gourmet trail chef during multi-week backpacking trips in the Yosemite backcountry and the White Mountains of New Hampshire.