Dr. Melissa Michal, assistant professor of English, will share “Genocide of the Mind and Indigenous Resilience,” during a Colloquium presentation at 4 p.m. on Jan. 17 in Centennial Hall’s Stutzman Lecture Hall.
During the presentation, Michal will discuss how genocide and trauma have affected both American Indians and non-Natives, how American Indians have found resilience through art and performativity, and how we take action to evolve curriculum and business practices to enact Haudenosaunee brotherhood.
She will also read from her fiction work to offer examples of such resilience. This lecture is interdisciplinary and discusses history, education, psychology, art and literature.
Michal, a fiction writer, essayist, photographer and professor, is of Seneca, Welsh and English descent. She has read at places such as National American Indian Museum in Washington, D.C. and the Amerind Museum in Dragoon, Ariz. Michal’s work has appeared in “Arkana,” “The Florida Review,” “Yellow Medicine Review” and other places.
Her short story collection, “Living Along the Borderlines,” was a finalist for the Louise Meriwether first book prize and is out with Feminist Press. Her article, “There is No Question of American Indian Genocide,” is out with “Transmotion.” She has also finished her first novel, “Along the Hills,” and non-fiction lyric essay collection, “Broken Blood,” and is working on her monograph discussing genocide of the mind.
