John Sweet is an American historian with wide-ranging interests. His research has focused on the colonial encounters of Africans, Native peoples, and Europeans–and how their interactions shaped the emergence of the American nation. He has also worked with other historians and literary scholars on the Jamestown colony and biographical approaches to the Black Atlantic. His current project explores the history of sex, dating, and the law in the early years of the American Republic; it is called Ruined: A Story of Rape and Retribution in Old New York.