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headshot of Birgit Brander Rasmussen

Birgit Brander Rasmussen

Associate Professor

English, General Literature and Rhetoric

Background

Birgit Brander Rasmussen specializes in indigenous American literatures, media, and literacies. She is author of the award-winning book Queequeg’s Coffin: Indigenous Literacies and Early American Literature (Duke UP, 2012). Her next book is titled Signs of Resistance, Signs of Resurgence: Indigenous Literacies in Native American Literature, Culture, and Activism, 901 to the Digital Age. Her work has appeared in anthologies and scholarly journals like PMLA and American Literature, Early American Literature, Journal of Transnational American Studies, Modern Language Quarterly, Journal of American Studies, Mississippi Quarterly, and Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. She is co-editor of The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness (Duke UP, 2001, Reprint 2012) and is currently co-editing a new critical edition of Mary Rowlandson’s foundational captivity narrative.

Education

  • PhD, University of California Berkeley

Research Interests

  • Native American literatures, media, genres, and literacies
  • Race, Writing, Coloniality
  • Early American Studies
  • Comparative Ethnic Studies
  • Indigenous Feminisms
  • Decolonization
  • Archival Research

Teaching Interests

  • Native American Literature and Media
  • Early American Literature
  • Multiethnic American Literatures
  • Comparative Ethnic Studies: Race, Gender, Indigeneity, Migration
  • Colonialism, Imperialism, Decolonization
  • Latinx Literature
  • American Captivity Narratives