Mark Rifkin’s research 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. 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.

In this lecture, Prof. Rifkin will speak about his book When Did Indians Become Straight? Kinship, The History of Sexuality, and Native Sovereignty (Oxford University Press, 2010) as well as methodological intersections between Native Studies, Queer Studies, literature, and history.