Picture of Tom Biolsi

Tom Biolsi, Professor

Native American Studies

Office: 578 Barrows
Email: biolsit@berkeley.edu
Phone: 642-9849
Office hours: M 1:00-2:00, W 5:00-6:00

I am currently working on a book, Rural Modernities:  Space and Time, Race and Gender in the American Heartland, focusing on how new organizations of both space and time, conjugated by new race and gender arrangements, emeged and evolved on Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota during the "long" 20th century.  The book examines local history from the period of allotment (for Indians) and homesteading (for whites), through the New Deal and Cold War, into the present period of tribal sovereignty and agricultural crisis for family farmers.

Education

PhD, Anthropology, Columbia, 1987
BA, Anthropology, Hofstra University, 1975

Research interests

Native Americans and other indigenous peoples; political economy; race-making and racisms

Courses

Undergraduate Courses
NAS/ES 73AC. Indigenous Peoples in Global Inequality
NAS 72. Native Americans since 1900
NAS 102. Critical Native American Legal and Policy Studies
NAS 104. Native American Economic Development
Graduate Courses
ES 250. Colonial/Postcolonial Studies
ES 250. Race, Space, and Governmentality
ES 250. Situating the Indigenous
ES 230. Theorizing Race
 
Courses in 2009-2010
Fall:  ES 230. Theorizing Race
Spring:  NAS 102. Critical Native American Legal and Policy Studies

Selected publications

2007/2001 Deadliest Enemies: Law and Race Relations on and off Rosebud Reservation.  Minneapolis:  University of Minnesota Press.
 
2005  "Imagined Geographies:  Sovereignty, Indigenous Space, and American Indian Struggle."  American Ethnologist 32(2):239-59.
 
2004  "Race Technologies." In Companion to the Anthropology of Politics, edited by David Nugent and Joan Vincent.  Malden, MA:  Blackwell Publishing, 400-17.
 
2004  "Political and Legal Status ('Lower 48' States)."  In Companion to the Anthropology of American Indians, edited by Thomas Biolsi.  Malden, MA:  Blackwell Publishing, 231-47.

Honors & Awards

Visiting Fellow, Research Institute for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity, Stanford University, 2003-4
 

Faculty


Ethnic Studies Department
506 Barrows Hall #2570
Berkeley, CA 94720-2570
510-643-0796
510-642-6456 fax
ethnicst@berkeley.edu