Assistant Professor

Education

• B.A., University of Massachusetts, Amherst
• M.A., Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley – Ethnic Studies

Bio

Dr. Medak-Saltzman (Turtle Mountain Chippewa) is committed to working in the broad field of Global Indigenous Studies while staying focused on the specificity of American Indian history and experience. With this as an ultimate goal, her work has explored the exportation of American Indian Policy to Japan in the 1870s and its influence on the lives and experiences of the Ainu people who are indigenous to parts of, what is now, northern Japan. Her current and future work examines the presence of Native peoples at World’s Fairs, specifically at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition.

By illuminating the manners in which Native peoples have been equal actors in unequal histories, Medak-Saltzman intends for her work to help nuance and complicate our understandings of Indigenous Studies, “America,” U.S. foreign policy, and colonial interactions.  She is interested in comparative Ethnic Studies, Cultural Studies, American Indian history, Red Feminism, and contemporary cultural production.

She has taught classes in American Indian Studies, American Indian Literature (from a historical perspective), and Comparative Ethnic Studies for a number of years at the University of California, Berkeley where she received her doctorate. Before studying at Berkeley, Dr. Medak-Saltzman lived in Japan for three years where she studied at Nanzan University and taught high school in Iwakura-city in Aichi Prefecture.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Refereed Articles

“Transnational Indigenous Exchange: Rethinking Global Interactions of Indigenous Peoples at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition,” American Quarterly 62(3) Alternative Contact: Indigeneity, Globalism, and American Studies (September 2010): 591-615. (Nominated for Most Thought-Provoking Article of 2010 in Native American and Indigenous Studies at the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Annual Conference May, 2011)

Contributions to Edited Collections

Reprint of “Transnational Indigenous Exchange: Rethinking Global Interactions of Indigenous Peoples at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition” as a chapter in the volume Alternative Contact: Indigeneity, Globalism and American Studies, Johns Hopkins University Press: A Special Issue of American Quarterly Series: May, 2011.

Works in Progress

Article length work “From Vanishing American to Indigenous Futurisms: Moving Beyond Native Portrayals in Hollywood Horror and Science Fiction” 

Book length manuscript in progress Specters of Colonialism: Native Peoples, Visual Culture and Colonial Projects in the U.S. and Japan (1860-1904). 

Book Reviews

“Inside Diné Histories” Jennifer Nez Denetdale. Reclaiming Diné History: The Legacies of Navajo Chief Manuelito and Juanita, New Mexico Historical Review. 85 (4) (Fall 2010): 453-454.

“Who’s Indian, Whose Indian?!” C. G. Calloway, G. Gemunden, & S. Zantop, (Eds.). Germans and Indians: Fantasies, Encounters and Projections, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 27 (2) (2003): 121-123.

Office

Ketchum 22A

Contact

E-mail: danika.medak-saltzman@colorado.edu