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We are a group of UK-based scholars whose research focuses upon those indigenous peoples who remain under conditions of colonisation, primarily in the Americas but also looking towards a wider area that incorporates Australia, New Zealand and other 'New World' regions. Our principal aims are as follows:
composed by Dr. Jacqueline Fear-Segal and Dr Rebecca Tillett
26.04.2006
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To join us, our email list, or to find out further information about us, email native-studies-admin@uea.ac.uk
John Beck, Newcastle
Maggie Bowers, Portsmouth
My interests in Nat Studs consider comparative cross-border and transnational issues (Canada and US) (esp through literature) and the relationship to the State. Literary work includes magical realism in Nat Am writing, ecocriticism re Nat Am and humour. Writers include Silko, Erdrich, Alexie, King, Momaday.
Ann Marie Boyle, Essex (postgraduate)
Stephen Brimley (independent)
I run a consulting business that works with Native Nations throughout North America to build strong, culturally appropriate institutions for self-governance. My work spans numerous disciplines including, but not limited to: economic development, environmental management, health, education, criminal justice, and program evaluation. Current projects include working with the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians in my home state of Maine to build their own court to address the proportionately high rates of child welfare cases on their lands; and, conducting a study to determine the feasibility of establishing the first Native American college in the eastern United States.
Gordon Brotherston (independent)
Alison Brown, Aberdeen
Lara Cain-Gray, British Library
Helen Carr, Goldsmiths
Max Carocci, British Museum
I have been recently made Research Fellow at the Centre for Anthropology at the British Museum. I will be carrying out research in the Centre, focussing on a number of topics related to the collections in the BM. In particular, at present, I am doing research on Virginian Indians due to the forthcoming visit of Virginia's tribes representatives. This research ties in neatly with one of my research interests: the notion of extinction, ethnogenesis and the idea of tribe. This is also the topic of my talk at the first one day colloquium organised by the Native Studies Network.
In addition to my research interest on indigenous sexualities and genders (my PhD focussed on gay, lesbian and transgender Native Americans in San Francisco), my research interests revolve around the following areas: Native American urban communities, Native American art and material culture, cultural history of poorly known areas of the American borderlands (California/Arizona/Baja California, Texas/Coahuila/Nuevo Leon), and protohistoric cultural and economic contacts between North and Mesoamerica.
Susan Castillo, Kings
Gareth Clayton, UEA
Sigrid Clerk, Dundee (postgraduate)
I am at present a postgraduate student at the University of Dundee. My research project is on the Relationship Between the Delaware Indians and the Moravian Missionaries in mainly the Ohio Valley in the mid 18th century. I have to admit progress is very slow partly because I have been ill for some time and partly because most of the document I wish to study are kept in the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem in Pennsylvania, and partly because all the document are in German and in old German script. I try to spend most summers there to do my research. The Moravian Misionaries were a fairly small group in comparison with other missionaries. Their Church is in many ways similar to the Lutheran Church but differs on various points. The Moravians attitude to the Indians was, in my opinion, more tolerant and accepting of Indian life as it was at the period.
My work concentrates mainly on the activities on David Zeisberger and John Heckewelder both renowned missionaries of the Moravian Church and their relations with the Delaware Indians both those who chose to live in the mission villages and those who remained within their own societies.
Mandy Cooper, Christ Church Canterbury
Helen Dennis, Warwick
I teach an undergraduate honours module on Native American and Mixed Blood Narrations. Check it out at: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/undergrad/modules/special/en259/
I have a book coming out with Routledge in November. So the easiest thing is to give you the publisher's blurb.
Native American Literature considers a selection of post-war novels by Native American writers, including well known, canonical works such as Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, as well as lesser known but equally enjoyable texts, such as Janet Campbell Hale’s The Jailing of Cecelia Capture and Linda Hogan’s Solar Storms. Believing in the possibility of communicating across cultural boundaries, Native American Literature offers a series of readings that focus on the act of understanding imaginatively texts by Native American and mixed-blood authors that address and educate a global readership.
The book offers introductions to major novels, such as Paula Gunn Allen’s The Woman Who Owned the Shadows, Silko’s Ceremony, and Linda Hogan’s Power, based on strategies of close, attentive reading. Having demonstrated the principle of imaginative, empathetic reading by the general reader, the author builds on these initial readings to explore in more detail the impressive range of narrative strategies employed in this body of works. Her final chapter, on the novels of Louise Erdrich uses narratology as a tool for analysis. In so doing, she explores Erdrich’s sophisticated blend of oral storytelling traditions with aspects of modernist writing, and her remarkable construction of a novel cycle that relates a fictionalized version of Ojibwe history of the long twentieth century.
This book interweaves questions of narratology with a wide-ranging discussion of the themes of felicitous and infelicitous spaces. The author concentrates on the different representations of cultural spaces, on themes of displacement and homelessness, and on the inscription of mixed-blood identity that internalizes the trope of the conflictual frontier zone. In addition this study dwells on the fragility and power of individual and cultural memory as it is depicted in these novels. The book demonstrates that a judicious mix of imaginative and informed acts of interpretation permit the non-Indian reader to achieve spatialized readings of these novels, i.e. readings that read text in context and in depth. The author enacts a practice of cross-cultural reading, which employs a diversity of strategies to respond appropriately to this burgeoning canon of Native American literature.
And if you got through all that, currently I'm thinking about Native American literary representations of history. But don't hold your breath: I've been mulling this one over for some time already.
Brian de Ruiter, Swansea (postgraduate)
Felicity Donohoe, Dundee (postgraduate)
Andrew Fearnley, Cambridge (postgraduate)
Jacqueline Fear-Segal, UEA
Graeme Finnie, Dundee (postgraduate)
I am a p/g & Teaching Fellow at Dundee bringing an ecocritical
perspective to contemporary literature of the Southwest - Chicana and
EuroAmerican with a stress on the Native side, so border features here
as well. I also have an interest in Native representation in Film, as
Module Organiser for Film Studies at Dundee
Susan Forsyth, Essex
My previous research focused on the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890; its political and cultural context, and how it has been represented in various media over the succeeding 100+ years.
Currently, researching and writing a biography of James William (Tony) Forsyth who was in charge of the Seventh Cavalry at the Wounded Knee Massacre. Forsyth (no relation) had a career of over 40 years in the US military, spanning the civil and frontier wars. He worked for George McClellan and Phil Sheridan and was a good friend and correspondent of both George Armstrong and Mrs Libbie Custer.
I also try to keep up with contemporary American Indian literature and politics.
Nicholas Foxton, Bucks Chilterns
Tim Fulford, Nottingham Trent
My research interests comprise Indians in 1750-1850 in history and literature. Especially literary representations of Indians and by Indians in the Romantic era, in the context of the transatlantic relationship between Britain, Indans and the US. Joseph Brant, John Norton, George Copway, Peter Jones, John Tanner, Tecumseh, Redjacket and Cornplanter are especial interests. My book Romantic Indians is just out with OUP. A collection of essays, The Indian Atlantic, jointly edited with Kevin Hutchings, will appear late 2007.
Katy Garfitt, Leicester
I am a Research Assistant, working at University of Leicester's Museum Studies department, but I'm not directly researching in the area of Native studies just now. I did a BA in American Studies (looking in particular at art), and spent a year at the university of New Mexico in Albuquerque between 2001-2002, studying in the Native Am Studies department there. I am now helping to develop distance learning material in Museum Studies and Interpretive Studies (the latter is a new masters course which looks in detail at the common issues in interpretive and representational practices across the cultural heritage sector and beyond.
I am really happy to be a member of this research network to see what inspiring research other people are doing. It's especially good for me as I'm approaching the next step in my career where I'd like to look in more detail at the processes and politics of cultural representation (in art, museums and/or other sites of interpretation), perhaps as a phd.
Mick Gidley, Leeds
Kathryn Napier Gray, Plymouth
Claudia Haake, York
My primary research interest is Native American History from the late 19th century onward and I am especially interested in North American Natives from Mexico and the US. My major areas of interest in Native American Studies are ethnicity, identity and culture, and, more recently, sovereignty (still hoping I'll figure it out...). My work has primarily focused on identity issues in a transnational comparative framework, investigating the cases of the Mexican Yaquis and the United States Delawares. However, I have also has compared state policies towards indigenous peoples in Mexico and the US. Rights, especially land and treaty rights are among my other foci in research and teaching.
My current project examines the relationship between land (tenure) and identity in a number of indigenous societies of the Americas, and in particular the effects land loss had on Native identities. (The Swansea paper was a preview.)
John Harries, Edinburgh
Joy Hendry, Oxford Brookes
I am an anthropologist, and have actually spent the majority of my
fieldworking life in Japan. In the last few years, however, following up an initial interest in Japanese ideas about cultural display, I became interested in the way that Aboriginal/Indigenous/Native Peoples around the world are reclaiming their own representations -- in museums and cultural centres in particular, but also more generally in literary and performing arts, as well as tourism and so forth. I published a grossly naive book last year entitled Reclaiming Culture: Indigenous People and Self-Representation (Palgrave, New York, 2005) which reports on fieldwork carried out mostly in Canada, but with comparisons from several other countries, and attempts to describe the global movement I believe I found! It was experimental in a couple of ways, first in the methodology, which I have discussed elsewhere, and secondly (for anthropology anyway) in that it tries to privilege the "native voice" (all comments welcome in case you have seen, or see the book).
Moving on from this great experience, I began pondering the difference
between our relationship with people as anthropologists working in Japan (which are usually excellent) and those over the years of anthropologists working elsewhere, which can be very variable. My new project is to investigate ways that the thinking and practice of people involved in Indigenous/Aboriginal/Native Studies are affecting and influencing our longer-standing "Western", or "Enlightenment" thinking, particularly in anthropology, but I expect there will be parallels in all your fields -- again a big subject, but I plan some detailed work as well!
Sam Hitchmough, Christchurch Canterbury
Carole Holden, British Library
I work at the British Library, where I am responsible for the Americas collections. I’m slowly (very slowly!) attempting to identify and list significant items relating to Native Americans i.e. unique or rare material that people might not know or expect us to have e.g a run of the Cherokee Phoenix, the first Native American newspaper. I also have an interest in photography so, in response to previous posters, I should perhaps mention that we have a complete set of Curtis’s North American Indian (part of which was recently on display in our Treasures Gallery). We also have a large collection of Canadian photographs dating from between the 1890s to 1920s and there are numerous photos of First Nations peoples contained within it. The Canadian photographs are about to the focus of an ESRC collaborate Ph.D. studentship with Royal Holloway so I hope that they will become both more known and accessible to other researchers.
If anyone has any queries relating to our holdings, or if you are planning on doing any research here, I will be happy to help if I can. Also, if you find that we are missing key contemporary texts, do let me know. We’re currently having a go at improving our Native American literature holdings but, given the huge area of publishing that we have to cover, it’s impossible to pick up everything so we appreciate all the help we can get.
Rebecca Horton (independent)
Rossitza Ivanova, Warwick
I am interested in researching and contributing to literary theories and teaching approaches that aim to bring sovereignty issues to the foreground of American Indian literature discussions. In this relation, I study the critical work of 'tribal-centred' scholars like Elizabeth Cook-Lynn and Craig Womack. While their ideas may have weaknesses and limitations, I am interested in highlighting ways in which they challenge and transform established cultural-political interpretations of contemporary American Indian literature. I am furthermore interested in researching how 'conventional' multicultural, postcolonial and postmodern approaches could (and should) change and expand to address the specific sovereignty issues and cultural-political interests of American Indian tribes in the US.
I have recently finished my PhD dissertation which examines tensions in American Indian studies between Native Americanists like Krupat, Owens and Vizenor -- who favour a somewhat 'conventional' postcolonial, postmodern and multi-culturalist approaches to American Indian literature -- and tribal-centred critics like Cook-Lynn and Womack who advocate a more 'indigenist' approach, closely related to tribal sovereignty issues. I see limitations in both strands of critical thought and my research focuses on proposing a (possible) bridge between them.
I seek to test and illustrate my ideas through readings of contemporary American Indian literature. So far I have focused mainly on Silko's and Erdrich's work. I am hoping to broaden my research to include literary works by Cook-Lynn, Womack, Owens, Welch, Hogan, Tapahonso and a few others.
Karen Jones, Kent
My interests here relate to broader work on the American West and
environmental history. Strands of particular interest include the animal in indigenous mythology/subsistence, specifically the wolf; the relationship of Native American groups to national parks and protected areas; indigenous hunting practice and identity in the Rocky Mountain West (US and Canada); and popular representations of the American Indian in the West.
Stephanie Jones, Birkbeck
I am submitting my Phd thesis in the Spring of 2007 at Birkbeck College, University of London, provisionally entitled "Here We Are and This Is What We Do": Indian Artist Identity and its Roles in Campaigns for Cultural Reform, 1917-1945
Michelle Keown, Edinburgh
Tracey Kerr, Edinburgh (postgraduate)
Annie Kirby (independent)
Padraig Kirwan, Goldsmiths
Allan Kristensen, Newcastle (postgraduate)
Drew Lyness, UEA
Gail MacLeitch, Kings
My research explores relations between the Iroquois Indians of colonial
New York with the British Empire (settlers, soldiers, traders and administrators) in the mid-to-late eighteenth century. I'm particularly interested in how Native men and women became involved in a new market economy and the impact this had on gendered, ethnic, and racial identities. My book is tentatively entitled: Imperial
Entanglement Iroquois Change and Persistence in the Frontiers of Empire and will be coming out with the University of Pennsylvania press. An article from this work has been published in the Journal of American Studies (2001).
For my next project I want to examine Indian constructions of Indianness in the early 19th century. i.e. how they engaged with white discourses on Indianness and resisted, modified and co-opted these discourses for their own ends.
I'm a lecturer in American studies at King's College London, where I currently teach a BA course on Native American history and an MA course on cross-cultural encounters on North American frontiers.
James Mackay, Kings (postgraduate)
My work is in two areas. I'm researching a PhD thesis which attempts an analysis of the various works by "fake natives" in the 1970's and 80's (people like Jamake Highwater etc). In addition, I'm doing some work on Gerald Vizenor's novels, for an upcoming conference paper that will hopefully result in publication.
Deborah Madsen, Geneva
I've been working on Native American Literature for some time but when I try to summarize it I realise that this effort has been quite bitty. I guess there are three directions to my current work:
1. Native sovereignty issues in relation to critical multiculturalism, immigration, nationalism, and citizenship, and in this connection I'm interested in comparative indigenous studies -- bringing together Native American, indigenous Hawaiian, Canadian First Nations, Maori, Australian Aboriginal cultural production;
2. reading contemporary trauma theory through the lens of Native literature, as in the paper I gave at the last BAAS conference which, if you are interested, can be read at http://home.etu.unige.ch/~madsen/Unpublished%20Papers.htm; and
3. I am working on a collection of essays that deal with authenticity and social justice in the context of the Americas.
Sam Maddra, Glasgow
I am presently a lecturer in American History at the University of Glasgow. I teach an Honours Module on the Assimilation Era, its consequences, and legacies, and an M.Litt module on American Indian Identity.
When it comes to research, my specific area of interest is Native American History in an Atlantic World context. I look at Native American history through the lens of events and artefacts that spanned the Atlantic Ocean, American Indians’ experiences abroad, and how their interactions with Britons and Europeans contributed to the making of their identity.
My recently published monograph, Hostiles? Lakota Ghost Dancers and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, considers both the Lakota Ghost Dance of 1890 and Buffalo Bill's Wild West exhibition in the years 1890-92, exploring the nature, significance, and consequences of their interaction at this particularly crucial time in Native American history. This research utilised an overlooked but unique source – the Short Bull narratives – to cast an entirely new light on the Lakota Ghost Dance religion, and the impact of Wild West travel and participation on the history and culture of the Lakota. I privileged Lakota participants’ voices and agency over the interpretations of white policy makers and Indian reformers. My research questioned the dominant interpretation that the Lakota perverted Wovoka’s doctrine of peace, and argued instead that the Ghost Dance leaders advocated peace and accommodation. It demonstrated how the Ghost Dance crisis in South Dakota was fundamental to the continued success of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, as it enabled them to overturn the ban placed on the further employment of Indian performers. After the military suppression of the religion, 23 Ghost Dancers who were removed to Fort Sheridan, Illinois, were later released into the custody of William F. Cody (Buffalo Bill) to travel to Europe and perform in his Wild West exhibition. The monograph then goes on to detail the tour of Britain, examining how Cody presented the former Fort Sheridan prisoners, British perceptions of the Ghost Dancers, and the Lakota experiences of the 1891-92 tour.
My next major research project is an examination of Inuit connections with Europe bought about by the European Artic whale Fishery. Amongst the fundamental primary sources for this research are the numerous Inuit kayaks now found in British museum collections. This study will also consider the sightings of ‘Finn-men’ off of the coasts of Orkney and Shetland, the reported kidnapping of Inuit who were bought to Europe, and the numerous instances of Inuit travelling voluntarily to Britain on whale ships. Through such analysis I hope to determine the nature and significance of the relationships between the Whalers and the Inuit, how and with what implications these changed over time, as well as exploring perceptions of ‘the other’ within the North Atlantic whale fishing industry.
Sarah Martin, Goldsmiths
Christina Matteotti, Kings (postgraduate)
Steve Mills, Keele
My interest in Native Americans and the First Nations comes from looking at the present day landscape memorialisation of only certain facets of the imperial project and certain reactions to it both in the 18th century and subsequently. I have a particular interest in the way settler-native people interaction is addressed in Tidewater Virginia as I have been studying the wider issue of how the past is presented to the public between Jamestown and Yorktown since I was a graduate student in Washington DC thirty years ago. I have developed a network of friends and colleagues across much of Virginia, and have helped promote an undergraduate exchange for Keele students with Old Dominion University in Norfolk to further my particular interest in the Tidewater. I have always been interested in the early, eastern frontier, seeing the way the east is dismissed in half an initial chapter in most college text books on western history as willfully ignoring periods, peoples and interactions that constrained indeed helped set up trans-Mississippi expectations and developments. Indeed without a concern for 17th and 18th centuries subsequent western experiences makes little sense (to me at least). Over the years this concern has widened to consider how such issues of what I call public history are dealt with elsewhere in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The native peoples are thus an essential but not exclusive concern for my work.
Nick Monk, Warwick (postgraduate)
I'm in the last throes of a PhD at Warwick entitled Literary Responses to Modernity in the American Southwest: Leslie Silko & Cormac McCarthy. Methodologically I'm interested in Owens, Vizenor, Krupat, Fixico, etc, also, storytelling, narrative theory, theories of modernity, cultural geography, performativity, phenomenology, and narratives of spiritual formation.
David Murray, Nottingham
Stuart Murray, Leeds
Tatsushi Narita, Nagoya City Japan
Peter Noble, Reading
Suzanne Owen, Edinburgh
Martin Padget, Aberystwyth
I have taught a module in Native American literature module on a regular basis since 1994. The first time was at the University of California, San Diego, where I studied for my PhD and which, perhaps surprisingly, had no standard course offerings in American Indian literature (although my friend Ross Frank has taught Native American history there a good while). The five exchange students from British universities initially seemed a bit disappointed that some bloke from Sussex University was teaching the module. Going from teaching in a location in proximity to reservations, modern-day casinos and ancient village sites in southern California's Anza Borrego desert to one where, mainly British, students have little experience of native people or cultures other than popular representations has been an interesting challenge. One outcome of this has been the book Beginning Ethnic American Literatures, co-authored with Helena Grice, Candida Hepworth and Marial Lauret, in which I wrote the section on Native American literature. I'm glad to see that since that book was published, in 2001, that British publishers have seemed more inclined to take on
full-length books on topics in American literature. This, I imagine, is a reflection not only of greater interest in Native American literature but also ethnic American literatures more generally amongst British academics and students.
Soon I will be embarking on a study of travel writing and the American
Southwest, from the Spanish colonial period to the present day. As with my first book on the region, Indian Country: Travels in the American
Southwest, 1840-1935, much attention will be paid to the ways in which travellers represented the native cultures--Rio Grande Pueblos, Navajos, Apaches, Tohono O'odham, Zunis, etc--of the region. But this book will take greater account of ongoing ethnohistorical research into southwestern Indian cultures.
In common with Mick Gidley and Shamoon Zamir, I have an interest in
photography of Native Americans. I hope one day to develop this at greater length. On a related note, I have found that there are some interesting parallels between the photographic representation of Native Americans in the late 19th century and photographs of the people of St. Kilda, the most remote of the British Isles until its evacuation in 1930, in the same period.
Joy Porter, Swansea
Stephanie Pratt, Plymouth
1) An exhibition entitled 'Between Worlds; Voyagers to Britain, 1700 - 1860' to be held at the National Portrait gallery in London (opening March 2007). My section of the exhibition will focus mainly on Mohawk/Canienga peoples in the 1710 visit of four Indian men and latterly when Joseph Brant visited in 1776 and 1786. I hope to have on show several important portraits of each of the visitors discussed and to place significant material items personally relating to them borrowed from collections at the British Museum, British Library and abroad to help enliven the stories of their contacts with the British.
2) I hope to extend this work into the planning and carrying out of another major exhibition, with the working title 'Negotiating Two Worlds: American Indian dignitaries, delegates and travellers in Britain and North America, 1600 - 1920' that will examine the long history of visual representation of American Indians who acted on the interface between their own communities and those who sought them as representatives and leaders, taking in the developments in visual culture over the long historical period of contact, with sections on the development of the 'Indian gallery' idea and the delegation group photograph.
3) Finally, I am also at work on an essay about the connections between the visual and theatrical/literary representations of Creek, Cherokee and Catawba Indian peoples in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries for a volume (currently in planning stages) entitled 'The Indian Atlantic: Native Americans And Anglo-American Culture 1755-1850', edited by Tim Fulford and Kevin Hutchings.
James Procter, Stirling
Faith Pullin, Edinburgh
I teach a postgraduate course dealing with Leslie Silko, Joy Harjo, Linda Hogan, Louise Erdrich and Paula Gunn Allen. I'm also currently doing a book on native american writing and Latino/a writing-discussing Momaday, Welch, Greg Sarris, Sherman Alexie et.al.
Gemma Robinson, Newcastle
Bryony Slater, Newcastle (postgraduate?)
David Stirrup, Kent
Tommy Sweeney, Dundee (postgraduate)
My research concerns 17th century English religious and gendered conceptions of the New World, and its inhabitants. I cant really give you a title to my phd as yet (because i dont have one), but it focuses upon how the English used gender and religion to shape their conceptions of devilry in the Indian condition through the course of the 17th century. Be it concerning legal issues, such as land ownership, or Puritan notions of the American Indians 'natural condition' it seems as if gender and religion are strongly linked in the English justification for many of their laws and opinions concerning the Indian.
Jill Terry, Worcs
Rebecca Tillett, UEA
Gabriella Treglia, Durham
Matthew Ward, Dundee
My research focuses on the eighteenth century North American frontier and in particular on the interaction between Euro-American settlers and Native Americans. Most of my previous publications have focussed on aspects of the Seven Years' War, including some work on the experiences of white captives and Native American demography. I am now starting work on a five-year AHRC funded project examining frontier violence in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, including interracial violence, and some comparative work on the experiences of the early (British) Canadian and United States frontier.
David Watson, Dundee (postgraduate)
Iam currently researching the relations between the British Army and Native Americans in the post Seven Years War period. In research I hope to draw together a lot of different strands, including the use of garrisons in the back country, the role of Army officers relations with Native Americans, how the British Empire saw Native Americans, the relationship between the Army and the Indian department and of course how Native Americans viewed and responded to the Army's involvement in the backcountry.
Sharon Wheeler, Birkbeck
John Wills, Kent
I'm an interdisciplinary American Studies scholar who works on environmental matters, cyberculture and the 1950s. I have worked a little on Chumash Indians in California (their environmental concerns and identity issues), and have interests in the construction of the 'ecological Indian', Native American identity in contemporary USA, uranium mining and Indians, and the presentation of the Native American in film and video/computer games.
Shamoon Zamir, Kings
My previous work has been on the interactions of African American, Euro-American and European intellectual traditions and literatures and on the relationship between anthropology and post-World War II American poetry. I have written briefly on Silko and am at present working on a study of Edward S. Curtis. There is also ongoing research on Native American phototexts and the work of Vizenor and Silko.
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