Eidson Distinguished Professor in American Literature LeAnne Howe presents scholar and author Chadwick Allen for her annual American Indian Returnings (AIR) Talk. This year's AIR Talk will take place on the Autumnal Equinox, Thursday, September 29th, at 4:15 p.m. The location of this year's talk is the Special Collections Library Rm 271, 300 S. Hull Street, Athens, GA 30602.
Allen is Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement at the University of Washington. His scholarship centers around studies of contemporary Native American and global Indigenous literatures, other expressive arts, and activism. Author of the books Blood Narrative: Indigenous Identity in American Indian and Maori Literary and Activist Texts (Duke UP, 2002), Trans-Indigenous: Methodologies for Global Native Literary Studies (U of Minnesota P, 2012), and Earthworks Rising: Mound Building in Native Literature and Arts (U of Minnesota P, 2022), he is also co-editor, with Beth Piatote, of The Society of American Indians and Its Legacies (a special combined issue of the journals Studies in American Indian Literatures and American Indian Quarterly, 2013). He served as editor for the journal Studies in American Indian Literatures between 2012 and 2017, and he served as the 2013-2014 President of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA). At the UW, he helped found the Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies (CAIIS) and served as one of its inaugural co-directors in 2018-2021.
Information on Allen's talk:
Mapping the Indigenous Futures of Post-Removal Mounds
Chadwick Allen will overview his new book, Earthworks Rising: Mound Building in Native Literature and Arts and discuss examples of how contemporary Indigenous communities are reengaging—and reimagining—ancient traditions of building large-scale earthworks. How do these post-Removal mounds make meaning for tribal citizens and broader audiences, especially when they are part of state-of-the-art public venues for Indigenous self-representation, such as the tribally specific Chickasaw Cultural Center (opened in 2010 near Sulphur, Oklahoma) and the multi-tribal First Americans Museum (opened in 2021 outside Oklahoma City)?