Joshua B. Nelson is an Assistant Professor of English specializing in American Indian literature, with a research focus on Cherokee literature. He is also affiliated with Native American Studies and Film and Video Studies. His current project, Progressive Traditions: Cherokee Cultural Studies, looks to dismantle the pervasive traditional vs. assimilated dichotomy that limits the available vocabularies used in American Indian literary criticism. As a way of coming at this binary, he turns away from single markers of identity toward a range of practices like worshipping, working, exploring, educating, dissenting, etc. that open up ways of doing, being, and understanding Indianness. He has published in American Indian Culture and Research Journal and Great Plains Quarterly. He also has a recent interview with Sherman Alexie and an article on mobility in his work in World Literature Today (http://www.ou.edu/worldlit/onlinemagazine/2010july/). Reviews of new works by Alex Posey and Robert Conley are forthcoming in Studies in American Indian Literatures.

He earned his B.A. in psychology at Yale, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in English with a minor in American Indian Studies at Cornell. Despite his time in the northeast, he is a Native Oklahoman in multiple senses, as a Cherokee citizen and, well, an Oklahoman. Courses he has taught at OU and formerly at Cornell and Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, OK, include Cherokee and American Indian literature, orature, and film; in addition to divergences into American literature, mysteries, and film appreciation. He is interested in several -isms: postcolonialism, anarchism, nationalism, feminism, pragmatism, and pluralism, as ways of putting things together (and knocking them down). He thinks writing in the third person is an unconscionable attempt at self-aggrandizement disguised as objective commentary.

Spring 2010 Courses:

ENGL 2743.001 American Indian Literature: Modern and Contemporary

ENGL 3483.001 Native American Writers: The American Indian Renaissance

ENGL 4950.001/5960.034/MLLL 4950 WLT Puterbaugh Conference on Sherman Alexie

Fall 2010 Courses:

ENGL 3243 Cinematic Representations of Native Americans TR 10:30-11:45, + T 6-8 screening

ENGL 5703 Theories of the Indian/Indian Theories, TR 3-4:15

Spring 2011 Courses:

ENGL 2743 American Indian Literature: Modern and Contemporary TR 3:00-4:15

ENGL 3363 Films and Context: Native American Film TR 12:00-1:15, + T 7-9 screening

You can reach Professor Nelson at joshuabnelson@ou.edu or 405-325-5067, or visit Gittinger Hall 104 during fall office hours, Thursdays 9:00-10:15 and 1:00-2:45.