Susan Bernardin
Ph.D., University of California, Santa Cruz
AB, Princeton University
Professor
Before coming to Oregon State University, Susan Bernardin served as longtime department chair of Women and Gender Studies at SUNY Oneonta and was a member of the English Department.
Research Fields
Indigenous literary & visual arts, comics, film, mixed media; Gender and Western American Studies
Additional Teaching and Research Areas
Feminist and decolonial methodologies; environmental & climate justice; Indigenous California.
Selected Professional Activity
2025 New Leadership Academy (AAC & U) Alumni Retreat & 10th Anniversary Convening, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
2023 Fellow, New Leadership Academy Fellows Program. Partnership of University of Utah and American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education.
2023-26 Executive Committee, Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures
2023-26 Executive Council, Western Literature Association
2015 Co-President, Western Literature Association
Select & recent publications:
“The West That Never is: Arigon Starr’s Super Indians and Indigenous World-Making.” In TheNomadic West: Transnational and Interdisciplinary Approaches to Western American Culture. Ed. Ángel Chaparro Sainz. Routledge, 2025: 198-209. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003507628
“Curative Comics: Arigon Starr’s History Lessons.” Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society. Special Issue: Seeing Stories with Indigenous Comics. 8.3 (Fall 2024): 243-59. DOI: 10.1353/ink.00015
Foreword. Arigon Starr, Super Indian Volume 3. Wacky Productions, 2024.
The Routledge Companion to Gender and the American West, ed. Routledge Gender Series, 2022. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351174282
“Monumental Reckonings and Impossible Placeholders: Introduction to Gender and the American West” In Gender and the American West. 2022.
“Intergenerational Memory and the Making of Indigenous Literary Kinships.” In Lutes JM, Travis J, eds. Gender in American Literature and Culture. Cambridge Themes in American Literature and Culture. Cambridge University Press, 2021:142-159.
“Afterlives: A Coda.” In Graphic Indigeneity. Frederick Aldama, ed. University Mississippi Press, 2020: 361-63.
Special Issue of Western American Literature: A Journal of Literary, Cultural, and Place Studies. “On the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary: Genealogies, Keywords, Methodologies.” Susan Bernardin and Krista Comer, eds. 53.1 (Spring 2018).
“There’s a River to Consider: Heid Erdrich’s “Pre-Occupied.” Studies in American Indian Literatures (SAIL). Special Issue, “Digital Indigenous Studies: Gender, Genre, and New Media.” 29.1 (Spring 2017): 38-55.
“Acorn Soup is Good Food: News from Native California and the Intersections of Literary and Visual Arts.” Studies in American Indian Literatures (SAIL) 27.3 (November 2015): 1-33.
“Indigenous Memories and Western American Literary History.” In A History of Western American Literature. ed. Susan Kollin. Cambridge University Press, 2015: 15-30.
“Future Pasts: Comics, Graphic Novels, and Digital Media.” In Routledge Companion to Native American Literature. ed. Deborah L. Madsen. Routledge, 2015: 480-93.
Special Issue of Western American Literature: A Journal of Literary, Cultural, and Place Studies. Guest Editor. 49.1 (Spring 2014).
“It’s a Good Day to Bike: Indigenous Futures in Ramona Emerson’s Opal.” Special Issue of Western
American Literature: A Journal of Literary, Cultural, and Place Studies. 49.1 (Spring 2014): 89-112.
In the Land of the Grasshopper Song: Two Women in Klamath River Indian Country, 1908-09. By Mary Arnold and Mabel Reed. New edition, with introduction by Susan Bernardin, foreword by André Cramblit and afterword by Terry Supahan. University of Nebraska Press, 2011.
Courses Taught
MAST 300: Society, Culture, & the Marine Environment
ENG 360 Native American Literature
WGSS 110: Gender, Race, & Popular Culture
WGSS 440: Women & Natural Resources
WGSS 518: Feminist Research