As both a teacher and a scholar, Stephen Warren emphasizes that the past is never safely historical. In the classes he teaches, he asks his students to view academic research with a fresh perspective; as avenues for serving the world rather than knowledge that is peculiar and limited to the college classroom.

Amber Brian is Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese. She also directs the Latin American Studies Program. Her research and teaching focus on colonial Spanish America.

Dr. Doershuk is an archaeologist who works at UI in the role of State Archaeologist of Iowa, directing the Office of the State Archaeologist (OSA), a research center on campus established in 1959. Dr. Doershuk’s research on Iowa and midcontinental archaeology spans all time periods and cultural adaptations. In addition to his OSA Director activities, Dr. Doershuk works with undergraduate and graduate student assistants from many UI departments, including those supported by externally and internally funded grants and contracts as well as through independent studies, as volunteers, and as part of graduate committees.

My research is informed by the principles of historical ecology, which attempts to integrate the notions of ecology and the environment as central themes in the study of human societies. My work focuses on landscape-scale processes of human-environment interactions expressed in long-term behavioral changes (spanning from the end of the Ice Age to the historic period) across various environmental settings (Great Plains grasslands, Rocky Mountains, Desert Southwest).

Tom Arne Midtrød joined the Department of History in the Fall 2009. His research focuses on North American Indians from first contact with Europeans through the era of the American Revolution. Tom Arne has recently published his first book (The Memory of All Ancient Customs), which explores diplomacy and other forms of interaction among Native peoples and societies in the Hudson River Valley in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

I am a medical anthropologist whose research examines the cultural politics of defining and addressing social inequalities in health, especially within indigenous communities. My projects are frequently interdisciplinary, and emphasize combining anthropology with public health (especially through “cultural epidemiology,” which aims to culturally situate both the causes of health problems and the production of epidemiological knowledge). Topics of recent projects in Native North America include promoting sobriety, and understanding historical trauma as a conceptual framework for contemporary mental health. Other recent work examines complementary/alternative medicine use by parents for children with developmental disabilities, and projects to address youth violence and perinatal HIV transmission.

Phillip Round is Professor of English and Native American and Indigenous Studies. He is the author of three books on American literature, By Nature and By Custom Cursed: Transatlantic Civil Discourse and New England Cultural Production, 1620-1660 (University Press of New England, 1999), The Impossible Land: Story and Place in California’s Imperial Valley (University of New Mexico Press, 2008), and Removable Type: Histories of the Book in Indian Country, 1663-1880 (University of North Carolina Press, 2010). He has received several awards, including two Fulbright scholarships and a CIC American Indian Studies Consortium Faculty Fellowship at the Newberry Library (2004-2005).

Carrie Schuettpelz is an Associate Professor of Practice, focusing primarily on social policy, homelessness, and poverty. In addition to serving on the Board of Directors for the Iowa Balance-of-State Continuum of Care, she works with communities across the state to create plans to prevent and end homelessness. She also serves as the Vice President of the Native American Council.

Lindsay Vella is the Departmental Administrator for African American Studies, American Studies (including the Native American and Indigenous Studies Program), Classics, the Division of Interdisciplinary Programs, Gender, Women's & Sexuality Studies, the Magid Center for Writing, and Religious Studies. She has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa.