Shari Huhndorf

Shari M. Huhndorf received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from New York University, and she is currently Class of 1938 Professor of Native American Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. Her research and teaching focus on the areas of interdisciplinary Native American studies, Alaska Native studies, contemporary literary and visual cultural studies, Indigenous feminism and gender studies, and American studies.

Professor Huhndorf is the author of three books, including Native Lands: Culture, Gender, and Indigenous Territorial Claims (University of California Press, 2024). Her previous books include Going Native: Indians in the American Cultural Imagination (Cornell University Press, 2001) and Mapping the Americas: The Transnational Politics of Contemporary Native Culture (Cornell University Press, 2009), along with the co-edited volume Indigenous Women and Feminism: Politics, Activism, Culture (University of British Columbia Press, 2010), winner of the Canadian Women’s Studies Association prize for Outstanding Scholarship.  Another co-edited work, Sovereignty, Indigeneity, and the Law (Duke University Press, 2011), a special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly, won the Council of Editors of Learned Journals award for best special issue of a journal as well as the award for outstanding indigenous scholarship from the American Indian and Alaska Native Professors Association. Her work has also appeared in journals including Critical Inquiry, Signs, PMLA, American Quarterly, American Anthropologist, and South Atlantic Quarterly. She has received major fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the American Association of University Women. Currently she is completing a Native community history of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, the largest Indigenous land claims settlement in US history.

Professor Huhndorf is a previous trustee and chair of the repatriation committee of the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution. She also served as a member and chair of the executive committee of the Division of Twentieth-Century American Literature of the Modern Language Association. For a decade, she served on the board of directors of the CIRI Foundation, which provides educational funding and supports cultural programs for Alaska Natives in her home community. Currently she is a member of the Advisory Committee on Cultural Storytelling and Stewardship at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. At Berkeley, Professor Huhndorf is affiliated with the Center for Race and Gender, the Interdisciplinary Program in American Studies, the Designated Emphasis in Gender and Women’s Studies, the Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues, and the Canadian Studies Program. 

Professor Huhndorf received a President’s Award from the Alaska Federation of Natives for her contributions to Native education as well as a Distinguished Teaching Award from the Division of Social Sciences and a Distinguished Faculty Mentor Award from the Graduate Assembly at UC Berkeley. She is Yup’ik and was born and raised in Alaska.

Courses Taught

Introduction to Native American Studies

Art and Activism in Native America

Contemporary Issues in Native America

Displaying Race, Displaying Culture: Exhibitions, Film, Photography

Native American Literature, Culture, and Politics

Indigenous Culture and the Politics of Space

Race and Visuality

Cultural Texts: Contemporary Theories and Methods