2005-2006 Fellows

Sarita Cannon
Native American House

Sarita Cannon is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and completed her doctoral dissertation in English entitled "Searching for the Authentic Red-Black Self:  Depictions of African-Native Subjectivity in Literature, Visual Art, and Film" under the direction of Hertha D. Wong.  Dr. Cannon's research engages in the recent emergence of scholarship on Black Indians as she explores various iterations of this particular multiracial identity in verbal and visual texts in the past two centuries.  Specifically, she is interested in the tropes that are repeated in artistic depictions of Black Indians, such as the trickster and the tragic mulatto/mixedblood, as well as the ways in which various media influence, and are influenced by, images of Black Indians.

Her teaching and research interests include 19th and 20th century U.S. Literature, Autobiography, Ethnic American Literatures, Feminist Theory, African American Studies, Native American Studies.

Andrea Smith
Native American House

Andrea Smith is currently an assistant professor of American Culture and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan.  Dr. Smith is a longtime anti-violence and Native American activist and scholar who is co-founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, a national organization that uses direct action, critical dialogue and grassroots organizing to address this critical issue.  She has synthesized her activism and her scholarship to recently publish Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide (South End Press). 

This work, as well as Professor Smith's other projects, is largely concerned with identifying resistance strategies within Native communities that will be helpful in promoting Native sovereignty struggles in particular and social justice in general.  Professor Smith will continue to work on these issues as she plans to further investigate "Native women's organizing and its theoretical implications for articulating the relationship between sovereignty and coalition politics."

Her teaching and research interests include violence against Native American women, the Christian right, American Indian activism, religion/spirituality and political activism.