Dustin Tahmahkera
Assistant Professor of Communication Studies
Areas of expertise
American Indian Studies, Sound Studies, Critical Media Studies, Popular Culture
Education
PhD, American Culture Studies, Bowling Green State University, 2007
MA, English, Midwestern State University, 2002
BA, English, Midwestern State University, 1999
Positions
Assistant Professor of Communication Studies (2009- ) and Paideia Professor (2011- )
Southwestern University
August 01, 2009 - present
Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow in the Native American House/American Indian Studies
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
August 01, 2008 - August 01, 2009
Interim Director of American Indian Studies and Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies
Minnesota State University, Mankato
August 01, 2007 - June 01, 2008
Teaching Philosophy
My teaching philosophy is an amalgam of what I have learned to do (and not to do) from relatives, friends, mentors, colleagues, and former instructors. Through a pedagogical framework of indigeneity--as informed by my Auntie LaDonna Harris (Comanche) and a Comanche-Anglo worldview--my critical pedagogy humbly enacts the philosophical tenets of relationship, reciprocity, redistribution, and responsibility. These four interconnected R's are prerequisites for the pedagogical practice of indigeneity, or the ability to stay true to one's principles and to be receptive to other people's ideas and approaches in and out of the classroom. As an educator, I wish to equip students with a diversity of views, to guide them toward having a broader understanding of topics, and not to enforce my beliefs as the way, as they work toward becoming stronger critical thinkers, readers, and communicators. Overall, like Paulo Freire's dedication to praxis, or to reflecting and acting upon the world in order to transform it, I want students to realize that they are producers, not just receivers, of knowledge and then to make effective use of that knowledge inside and outside of academia.
Courses: Spring 2013
Sonic Communication
American Indians in Media
Paideia Seminar 2B
Previous Courses
American Indians in Media; Puha Tsaat, Kaheeka Tsaat: Contemporary Indigenous Leadership (First-Year Seminar); Indigeneity (Paideia Seminar); Capstone Senior Seminar; Media and Culture; Music and Identity; Pop Culture and Paratexts; Introduction to Communication Studies
Professional Work
Selected Awards
Invited Participant for High Performance Sound Technologies for Access and Scholarship (HiPSTAS), National Endowment for the Humanities-funded Institute for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities, University of Texas, Austin, March 2013
Junior Sabbatical for Fall 2012, Southwestern University
Competitive Faculty Development Grant for 2013-14, Southwestern University
Competitive Faculty Development Grant for 2012-13, Southwestern University
Competitive Faculty Development Grant for 2011-12, Southwestern University
Competitive Faculty Development Grant for 2010-11, Southwestern University
Publications
Book Manuscript
~"Tribal Televisions: Decolonized Viewing, Sitcoms, and Indigeneity." Under review.
Refereed Articles and Book Chapters
~"American Indians in Popular Culture." In progress. Handbook of American Indian History, ed. Frederick E. Hoxie, Oxford UP.
~"'An Indian in a White Man's Camp': Johnny Cash's Indian Country Music." In American Quarterly, Special Issue: "Sound Clash: Listening to American Studies," ed. Kara Keeling and Josh Kun, September 2011, 63.3. 591-617.
~"Custer's Last Sitcom: Decolonized Viewing of the American Sitcom's "Indian.'" In American Indian Quarterly, Summer 2008, 32.3. 324-351.
~"'Pale face 'fraid you crowd him out': Racializing "Indians" and Indianizing Chinese Immigrants." In Immigrant Rights in the Shadows of U.S. Citizenship, ed. Rachel Buff, New York UP, 2008. 142-155.
~"Representations of the Indigenous Intellectual: 'A Warrior of the Truth.'" In Battleground States: Scholarship in Contemporary America, ed. Stephen Swanson. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007. 198-212.
Book Reviews
~Native Features: Indigenous Films from Around the World by Houston Wood, (Continuum, 2008). In Journal of the American Studies Association of Texas, V. 40, November 2009.
~Wasasé: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom by Taiaiake Alfred, (Broadview Press, 2005). In Indigenous Nations Journal, V. 6, Spring 2008.
~Going Indian by James Hamill, (U of Illinois Press, 2006). In Journal of the American Studies Association of Texas, V. 37, November 2006.
~Putting a Song on Top of It: Expression and Identity on the San Carlos Apache Reservation by David Samuels, (U of Arizona Press, 2004). In Journal of the American Studies Association of Texas, V. 37, November 2006.
