Angelica Lawson Awarded Inaugural CHA Reparative Faculty Fellowship
Angelica Lawson, Ethnic Studies and Cinema & Moving Image Studies Assistant Professor, has been awardedan the Inaugural Reparative Faculty Fellowship to Address Settler Colonialism from the Center for Humanities and the Arts (CHA). 鈥淓nacting Our Futures: Resistance and Resilience in Indigenous Women鈥檚 Resurgence Media,鈥 explores the intersections of Indigenous digital studies, literature, and ecocinema through Native American women鈥檚 creative works using resurgence theory鈥攁n Indigenous feminist framework most notably developed in the work of Anishinaabe scholar Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. Indigenous resurgence specifically refers to political strategies and cultural practices aimed at strengthening Indigenous peoplehood in ways that elevate Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies while interrogating legacies of colonialism in our societies, especially inequities along lines of gender and sexuality. Historically, art served both practical and ceremonial purposes, richly layered with symbolic meaning and deeply rooted in Indigenous thought systems. Today鈥檚 writers and filmmakers are doing similar work, invoking new modes for insuring continuance, and while the last three decades have seen a proliferation of Indigenous women鈥檚 literature, film, and digital media using Indigenous languages created by women who are heavily invested in community engagement鈥攂oth of which are elements central to Indigenous resurgence, these works have received scant attention in literary and film scholarship. Dr. Lawson's project seeks to reverse this trend, and to contribute to Indigenous feminist resurgence theory by engaging the work of four lesser-known Native women writers and filmmakers. She demonstrates how, through their community engagement and creative cultural productions, they assert Indigenous presence and futurity in the face of ongoing settler-colonial forces of erasure.