Director, Center for Poets and Writers at OSU-Tulsa
Associate Professor
PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
BA, Hendrix College
Areas of Interest & Expertise
- American Indian Studies
- Global Indigenous Studies
- Racial Healing
Recent Upper Division & Graduate Courses Taught
- ENGL/AMST 4230: Water is Life: A Standing Rock Syllabus
- ENGL 3353: Native American Film
- ENGL 6250: Native American Literature and Gender
- ENGL 4330: Reimagining the West
- ENGL 3190: Pacific Indigenous Literatures
- ENGL/AMST 3813: Indigenous Hawaii
- ENGL 6250: Native American Literature and the Environment
- ENGL 4310 American Modernism(s)
- AMST 3813: Native American Oklahoma
- AMST 3550: Native American Studies and the Arts
- Teaching Urban Native American Literatures (University of Paderborn, Germany)
Current Research & Projects
"Summer Camp in Indian Country." (Manuscript in progress).
Part interdisciplinary study, part memoir, this project investigates the hidden histories of summer camps in Oklahoma. As generations of children have gathered in search of spiritual renewal (and more) in the rural spaces of the former Indian Territory, the promise of finding "new life" has intertwined with narratives of frontier possibility. This study reorients the spaces of summer camp toward the tribes on whose land they were founded and exposes the limitations of revival without critical engagement with one's relationship to land.
Selected Publications
Books and Edited Volumes:
Editor, American Indian Quarterly
"Writing the Native City from Oklahoma." (under contract with U of NE P).
(with Paul Lai). Alternative Contact: Indigeneity, Globalism, and American Studies. Johns Hopkins UP, 2011.(co-edited essay collection; originally published as special issue of American Quarterly 62.3). Special Recognition, Constance M. Rourke Committee, American Studies Association, 2011.
Indians, Environment, and Identity on the Borders of American Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Articles and Book Chapters:
"How We Write About Tulsa," Redreaming Dreamland (special issue commemorating the Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial), World Literature Today, Spring 2021
"Talisi Through the Lens: Locating Native Tulsa in the Films of Sterlin Harjo." Settler City Limits: Indigenous Resurgence and Colonial Violence in the Urban Prairie West. Ed. Heather Dorries, Robert Henry, David Hugill, Tyler McCreary, and Julie Tomiak. University of Manitoba Press, 2019. 251-70.
(With Trever Holland). "'Beyond All Age': Indigenous Water Rights in Linda Hogan's Fiction." Studies in American Indian Literatures 28.2 (2016): 56-79.
"The 'Whole Foods' Paradox: Food Sovereignty, Eco-Iconography, and Urban Indigenous Discourse." Elohi: Indigenous Environments 1.2 (2013): 59-78.
"Indigenous Military Involvement in (De)Colonial Contexts." Critical Insights: War. Ed. Alex Vernon. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, (2012): 256-74.
'With These Magic Weapons, Make a New World': Indigenous Centered Urbanism in Tomson Highway's Kiss of the Fur Queen." Canadian Journal of Native Studies 29.1&2 (2009): 143-164.
The New World and Apocalypto: Updates of Old Stereotypes for the New Millennia (Introduction)." With Judith Villa and Penelope Kelsey. Studies in the Humanities (special issue on American Indian Studies) 33.2 (2006): 128-39.
Cross-Cultural Hybridity in James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans." American Transcendental Quarterly 20.3 (2006): 527-52.
Transcending the 'Tragic Mulatto': The Intersection of Black and Indian Heritages in Contemporary Literature." Ethnic Studies Review 26.1 (2003): 45-66.
Honors
Faculty, Newberry Library Graduate Seminar, 2021
University Award for Excellence in Advancement of the Land Grant Mission, OSU, 2019
Visiting University Faculty, Yale National Initiative to strengthen teaching in public schools, 2019
Community Engagement Award, College of Arts and Sciences, OSU, 2015
Junior Faculty Award, College of Arts and Sciences, OSU, 2012
Grants & Research Trips
- Opportunity Grant, Oklahoma Humanities, 2021
- Scholar Research Grant, Oklahoma Humanities, 2015
- College of Arts and Sciences Research Leave, Spring 2015 and 2021
- College of Arts and Sciences FY12 ASR + 1 Award
- College of Arts and Sciences Travel Award, 2007, 2009
- Dean's Incentive Grant, 2007, 2008
- Fae Rawdon Norris Endowment for the Humanities Grant, 2007
- Newberry Library, Chicago IL, 2007
- Sequoyah Fellowship for American Indian Studies, University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2005-2006.
Selected Conference Presentations
"Of Keystone, DAPL, and Diamond: Teaching About Standing Rock in Oil--and Indian--Country." Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, CA, May 2018
"Where it All Started: Jazz, History, and Futurity in the Writings of Joy Harjo." Native Crossroads Film Festival, Norman, OK, April 2018
"Reclaiming Glacier National Park in Mourning Dove's Cogewea (1927)." Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC, June 2017
"'The City Different': Finding--and Resisting--Indigenous 'Authenticity' in the Joy Harjo's Santa Fe." Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, June 2015
"'The Jokes Are on Us And/Or You': Comedy and Community of the 1491s." Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Annual Meeting, Austin, TX, May 2014
"Indigeneity and Self-Help." Public lecture. University of Paderborn. Paderborn, Germany, December 2011
"The 'Whole Foods' Paradox: Food Sovereignty, Eco-Iconography, and Urban Indigenous Discourse," International conference on Indigenous Peoples and the Environment, Bordeaux, France, December 2011
"Indigeneity and the Production of Urban Space," Sequoyah Distinguished Lecture Series, American Indian Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, April 2011
"Theorizing Urban Indigeneity," Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Annual Meeting, Tuscon, AZ, May 2010
"Cosmopolitan Indigeneity: Los Angeles in Joy Harjo's Poetry and Kent Mackenzie's The Exiles," American Studies Association Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, November 2009
"Urban Oklahoma in Sterlin Harjo's Four Sheets to the Wind," Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Annual Meeting, Minneapolis, MN, May 2009
"Global Indigeneity in Greg Sarris's Watermelon Nights," American Studies Association Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM, October 2008
"The Indigenous Cityscape in Tomson Highway's Kiss of the Fur Queen," Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Annual Meeting, Athens, GA, April 2008
"American Indian Literature and the City of Chicago." Modern Language Association Annual Meeting, December 2007.
"Images of the City in the Works of Sherman Alexie." Western Literature Association Annual Meeting, Tacoma, WA, October 2007.
“Place and Prophecy in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead,” Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Annual Meeting, Norman, OK, May 2007.