Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative

Mark S. Cladis is the Brooke Russell Astor Professor of the Humanities at Brown University. His work moves across poetry, literature, philosophy, and critical theory, often animated by a concern for environmental justice and Indigenous ecology. The writings of W. E. B. Du Bois and Leslie Marmon Silko are central to his reflections on radical aesthetics and storytelling--forms of art and narrative devoted to truth and justice. His scholarship, teaching, and collaborations often cross disciplinary boundaries, guided by a conviction that intellectual work is also ethical and imaginative work--an effort to reimagine justice, community, land, and belonging.

His latest book, Radical Romanticism: Democracy, Religion, and the Environmental Imagination (Columbia University Press, 2025), culminates in Silko’s storytelling. His next project, Just Home: Place, Belonging, and Justice, asks: How do Indigenous and settler communities create home on lands taken from Indigenous peoples?