I am passionate about teaching and always on the lookout for new ways to integrate the ideals of engaged scholarship, the student as scholar, and the fusion of teaching and research. I endeavor to craft dynamic lectures, stimulating small group discussions, provocative short-writing assignments, imaginative essay prompts, and innovative research projects that encourage students to think critically and interact meaningfully with scholarly books and articles, films, music, art, material culture, digital resources, primary documents, and each other. I place a premium on integrating sources that represent a broad range of disciplinary perspectives, including anthropology, archaeology, art and material culture, critical theory, language, law, literature, political science, and sociology.
As a specialist in American Indian and Indigenous Studies, I consider it vital to challenge students to reflect not only on what they have learned factually but also ethnomethodologically and epistemologically—to contemplate not only what we know but also the way people make sense of the worlds in which they live and how we know what we know. An essential part of this process involves critically engaging a diverse array of perspectives within Native and non-Native communities in and over time. This accomplishes the important work of exploding the Indian/white binary that has had too firm a hold on the field for too many years.
And finally, I adopt an engaged pedagogy that encourages students to consider what it means to take responsibility for having gained new knowledge. I convey to them that an understanding of the historical and contemporary experiences of Indigenous people provides an avenue to being a more responsible global citizen.
I have developed courses across every level of the undergraduate and graduate curriculum, including a first-year seminar on American Indian History, Law, and Literature (AMST 060); This Place Called “America” (AMST 101); Introduction to the Histories and Cultures of Native North America (AMST/HIST 110); American History since 1865 (HIST 128); Approaches to American Indian and Indigenous Studies (AMST/ANTH 203); Native America: The West (AMST/HIST 233); Twentieth-Century Native America (AMST/HIST 235); Beyond Red Power: American Indian Activism since 1900 (AMST 337); The Long 1960s in Native America (AMST 339); Digital Native America (AMST 341); and Interdisciplinary Research Methods (AMST 701) and Readings in Native American History (AMST/HIST 878) at the graduate level.
Among the things have become most excited about are means of integrating digital technologies into course delivery. In the fall of 2012, I developed an innovative collaborative module with a colleague at the University of Sydney in Australia through which students at both universities utilized web-based technologies to interact with one another in separate but overlapping classes. In 2014, I secured a grant from the Summer School to develop an online version of AMST/HIST 110, which I have now taught on numerous occasions. Most recently I have begun to explore Collaborative Online International Learning modules with colleagues with whom I’ve developed relationships from my tenure as Fulbright Bicentennial Chair in American Studies at the University of Helsinki from 2017-2018.
In the fall of 2019, I received an Undergraduate Research Consultant Team grant from UNC’s Office of Undergraduate Research. Drawing on innovative methodologies, neglected sources, cutting edge scholarship, and traditional and digital means of communication, our work reimagined the remarkable life of D’Arcy McNickle (1904-1977), one of the most important Native writers, intellectuals, and political figures of the twentieth century. You can learn more about the work we did and the additional projects that have flowed from it by visiting The Experiential World of D’Arcy McNickle page on this website.