Dr. Monika Siebert

Professor Siebert’s research interests focus on the late twentieth and early twenty first century contemporary American literature and North American indigenous literature and film. She is the author of Indians Playing Indian? Multiculturalism and Contemporary Indigenous Art in North America (2015), which explores how contemporary indigenous writers, filmmakers, museum curators, and visual artists represent historic and contemporary indigeneity in the context of the politics of recognition in the United States and Canada. Through a series of case studies ranging from the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C. through fiction, film, photography and installation art, the book explains how these artists and writers capitalize on the representational opportunities offered by North American multiculturalism as well as creatively confront the limitations multiculturalism imposes. Her current project studies contemporary cultural contests over Virginia’s precolonial and colonial heritage.