Chadwick Allen will give an overview of his forthcoming book, Earthworks Rising: Mound Building in Native Literature and Arts, and then discuss examples of how contemporary Indigenous communities are reengaging—and reimagining—ancient traditions of building large-scale earthworks. How do these new structures 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)?
Chadwick Allen is Professor of English and Adjunct Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Washington. 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 the forthcoming Earthworks Rising: Mound Building in Native Literature and Arts (U of Minnesota P, 2022), he is a past president of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) and a former editor for the journal Studies in American Indian Literatures.