Philip J. Deloria is the Carroll Smith-Rosenberg Collegiate Professor in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts at the University of Michigan, where he has appointments in the Departments of History and American Culture and the Programs in Environment and Native American Studies. He received his Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University in 1994, and came to Michigan in 2001, following six years at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Professor Deloria’s research focuses on the social, cultural and political histories of the relations between American Indians and the United States. His prizewinning 1998 book, Playing Indian, traced “Indian play” from the Boston Tea Party to the New Age movement, while his 2004 book Indians in Unexpected Places, examined the ideologies surrounding Indian people in the early twentieth century and the ways Native Americans challenged them through sports, travel, automobility, and film and musical performance. He is in the process of completing American Studies: A User's Guide, which surveys methods of interpretation and writing, and Toward an American Indian Abstract, an extended piece of art criticism.

Each semester the Writer to Writer series pairs one esteemed University faculty member with a Sweetland faculty member for a conversation about their challenges, processes, and expectations as both writers and writing teachers.