Christopher Pexa

Christopher Pexa specializes in 19th and 20th century Native American and U.S. literatures, Native American studies, and settler colonial studies, with an emphasis on questions of indigenous ethics, sovereignty, and nationalism. He completed his latest book with University of Minnesota Press, entitled Translated Nation: Rewriting the Dakota Oyate, that explores the ambivalent ways in which allotment-era Dakota authors played to white regimes of legibility while at the same time honoring tribal common sense and producing a contemporary Dakota nationhood. Pexa’s essays have appeared or are forthcoming in PMLA, Wíčazo Ša Review, SAIL, and MELUS. He is also a published poet and is currently working on a book of prose poetry, entitled Throne of Horses, about the afterlives of Indian boarding schools.

Pexa’s educational achievements are many. Cornell University, Andrew W. Mellon Diversity Postdoctoral Associate, 2013-15; Mellon Dissertation Fellow, 2012-13. Education: Vanderbilt University, Ph.D. in English, 2013; M.A. in English, 2008; Arizona State University, M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Poetry), 2003; University of Cambridge, Marshall Scholar, Graduate work in Social Anthropology, 1998-1999; Arizona State University, B.A. in Religious Studies, 1998, Summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Barrett Honors College Outstanding Graduate.