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Mark Rifkin

Contact Information
            E-mail: m_rifkin@uncg.edu
            Office: MHRA 3129

At UNCG Since: 2008

Education
            Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania-2003
            M.A. University of Pennsylvania-1999
            B.A. Rutgers University-1996

Research Interests
Dr. Rifkin’s research primarily focuses on Native American writing and politics from the eighteenth century onward, exploring the ways that Indigenous peoples have negotiated U.S. racial and imperial formations. In particular, he is interested in how U.S. law shapes the possibilities for representing Native political identity and the ways that Native writers have worked to inhabit, refunction, refuse, and displace dominant administrative formulations in order to open room for envisioning and enacting self-determination. More recently, he has been drawing on queer theory to rethink the role kinship systems have played in Native governance and internationalism and to address the ways U.S. imperialism can be thought of as a system of compulsory heterosexuality.

Selected Publications

  • When Did Indians Become Straight?: Kinship, The History of Sexuality, and Native Sovereignty, in progress.
  • “Indigenizing Agamben: Rethinking Sovereignty in Light of the ‘Peculiar’ Status of Native Peoples.” Cultural Critique, forthcoming.
  • “‘For the wrongs of our poor bleeding country’: Sensation, Class, and Empire in Ridge’s Joaquín Murieta.” Arizona Quarterly 65.2 (2009).
  • Manifesting America: The Imperial Construction of U.S. National Space. New York: Oxford University P, 2009.
  • “Debt and the Transnationalization of Hawai`i.” American Quarterly 60.1 (2008): 43-66.
  • “Native Nationality and the Contemporary Queer: Tradition, Sexuality, and History in Drowning in Fire.” American Indian Quarterly 32.4 (2008): 443-70.
  • “Documenting Tradition: Territoriality and Textuality in Black Hawk’s Narrative.” American Literature 80.4 (2008): 677-705.
  • “‘A home made sacred by protecting laws’: Black Activist Homemaking and Geographies of Citizenship in Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl.” Differences 18.2 (2007): 72-102.
  • “Romancing Kinship: A Queer Reading of Indian Education and Zitkala-Sa’s  American Indian Storie.” GLQ 12.1 (2006): 27-59.
  • “Representing the Cherokee Nation: Subaltern Studies and Native American Sovereignty.” boundary 2  32.3 (2005): 47-80.

Awards and Honors

  • New Faculty Grant, UNCG, 2009.
  • Ad Hoc Grant, Skidmore College, 2006.
  • Faculty Development Grant, Skidmore College, 2006.
  • Postdoctoral fellowship, Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture, University of Chicago, 2004-2005.
  • Diane Hunter Dissertation Prize, English Department, University of Pennsylvania, 2004.
  • Teaching Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania, 2001-2003.
  • Steinberg Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania, 2000-2001.
  • University Dissertation Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania, 1999-2000.
  • Teaching Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania, 1996-1999.
  • Distinguished English Honors Thesis, Rutgers University, 1996.