Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative

Visiting Scholars

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Visiting Scholars

The Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative is joined this year by the following visiting scholars.

  • Kamalani Johnson

    Artemis A.W. and Martha Joukowsky Postdoctoral Fellow in Gender and Sexuality Studies, Pembroke Center
    kamalani_johnson@brown.edu

    Dr. Kamalani M. F. H. Johnson is the Artemis A.W. and Martha Joukowsky Postdoctoral Fellow in Gender and Sexuality Studies at the Pembroke Center at Brown University. His research utilizes the archival recovery of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Hawaiian-language literature to develop the pūkuʻi concept—a methodology of intellectual binding and refusal. His current book project, Insurgent Archives: Intellectual Binding and Political Ontologies of Refusal, expands upon his dissertation to theorize how Kānaka Maoli intellectuals re-engineered media infrastructure to refuse the biopolitical assemblage of the U.S. Territorial period. He is particularly interested in how early twentieth-century print networks functioned as material kīpuka (safe havens) of relational sovereignty, examining how subaltern communities historically leveraged ancestral texts to resist state capture, settler-colonial pathologies, and state-centric paradigms of power. This theoretical intervention has been recognized by elite national bodies, securing the 2026 Law and Humanities Junior Scholar Award, the 2026 Biography Prize from the Center for Biographical Research (where he is the first political scientist in the prize's history to win), an appointment as a 2026 Fellow at the Institute for Critical Social Inquiry (ICSI) at The New School, and the American Political Science Association’s Diversity and Inclusion Advancing Research Grant for Indigenous Politics. His research on intellectual sovereignty, land intimacies, gender and sexuality, language revitalization, and biopolitics appears or is forthcoming in Hūlili, Journal of World Philosophies, American Quarterly, ADVA, and Biography, as well as edited volumes with University of Hawaiʻi Press and Bloomsbury Academic.

    In Spring 2027, Johnson will teach the GNSS course Archival Sovereignties: Gender, Sexuality, and the Decolonial Record. In this course, students will examine how colonial archival architectures historically categorized, pathologized, and sought to eliminate Indigenous bodies and non-normative gender expressions. Utilizing decolonial pedagogies, students will investigate historical text-networks, oral histories, and insurgent community archives to analyze how marginalized groups weaponize print and media to safeguard ancestral data, practice community care, and construct counter-geographies. Over the course of the semester, students will gain hands-on knowledge of applied public humanities by interfacing with visual sovereignty methods and constructing their own localized public history or digital archiving initiatives.

    Johnson holds a Ph.D. in Political Science (2026) with a focus on Indigenous Politics and Political Theory from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. He also holds an MA in Hawaiian Language and Literature (2022) and a BA in Hawaiian Studies and Linguistics from the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo.

  • Tarisa Little

    Postdoctoral Fellow in the Departments of History, Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative, and the Cogut Institute for the Humanities
    tarisa_little@brown.edu
    Cogut Institute for the Humanities Webpage

    Tarisa Little is Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History and the Cogut Institute for the Humanities. She is a Settler and works with members of the Wyandot of Anderdon Nation. Her research focuses on Indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing. Her current projects focus on Wendat/Wandat witches and Wendat/Wandat engagement (forced and voluntary) with Western-style schooling. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Saskatchewan in Canada and was a visiting professor for two years at Colgate University in the Native American Studies Program.

  • Nitana Hicks Greendeer

    Visiting Instructor
    nitana_hicks_greendeer@brown.edu
    Website
    Research Interests Culture-based education and culturally appropriate curricular models, language education and Indian Education

    Dr. Nitana Hicks Greendeer ’03 has an MS in Linguistics and a PhD in Education. She is a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, an advanced speaker of Wôpanâak, and currently serves as the head of the Weetumuw School.

  • Laura Pensa

    Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow, Hispanic Studies
    maria_laura_pensa@brown.edu

    Laura Pensa holds a degree in Anthropology from the Universidad de Buenos Aires and a PhD in Romance Languages and Literature from the University of Michigan, with a focus on Colonial Latin America and Indigenous Studies. She is interested in insurgent Indigenous groups of the South American lowlands, historical writing, critical cartography, and contemporary Latin American literature. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania (2023-2024) and is currently a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University (2024-2026). 

John Carter Brown Library Fellows

Additionally, each year the John Carter Brown Library hosts numerous short and long-term fellows whose research directly engages with Native American and Indigenous Studies. View the Library's Fellows Directory below.

JCB Library Fellows Directory