Molly S. McGlennen
Professor McGlennen was the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Native American Studies at Vassar College from 2006-2008, earned her PhD in Native American Studies from University of California, Davis in 2005, her MFA in Creative Writing and English from Mills in 1998, and her BA, English and Philosophy from University of San Diego in 1994. Her research and teaching interests include Native American literature, contemporary poetry, Native American feminisms and urban experiences, Native American visual culture, and poetry writing. McGlennen helped establish the Native American Studies Correlate within the American Studies Program at Vassar and has served as the NAS advisor since its inception in 2009.
Professor McGlennen was the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Native American Studies at Vassar College from 2006-2008, earned her PhD in Native American Studies from University of California, Davis in 2005, her MFA in Creative Writing from Mills in 1998, and her BA, English and Philosophy from University of San Diego in 1994. Her research and teaching interests include Native American literature, contemporary poetry, Native American feminisms and urban experiences, Native American visual culture, and poetry writing. McGlennen helped establish the Native American Studies Correlate within the American Studies Program at Vassar and has served as the NAS advisor since its inception in 2009.
McGlennen is the author of two collections of poetry: Fried Fish and Flour Biscuits (2010), published by Salt’s award-winning Earthworks Series of Indigenous writers, and Our Bearings (2020), published by the University of Arizona’s distinguished Sun Tracks series. McGlennen also authored a critical monograph Creative Alliances: The Transnational Designs of Indigenous Women’s Poetry (2014) from the University of Oklahoma Press, which earned the Beatrice Medicine Award for outstanding scholarship in American Indian Literature. Her co-edited collection with Inés Hernández-Ávila, Indigenous Poetics, is forthcoming from Michigan State University Press’s American Indian Studies series.
Her poems have appeared in Poetry; Academy of American Poets’ Poets.org (Poem-a-Day); Red Ink; Great Lakes Review; Yellow Medicine Review; Sentence; As/Us; Studies in American Indian Literatures; Frontiers; To Topos Poetry International: Ahani: Indigenous American Poetry; Shenandoah: The Washington & Lee University Review; Atlantis; Santa Clara Review, and Genocide of the Mind: New Native American Writing. Some of her scholarly essays have been published in Transmotion; Post-Indian Aesthetics: Affirming Indigenous Literary Sovereignty; Visualities: Native American Film and Art; Centering Anishinaabeg Studies; Salt’s Companion to Diane Glancy; Birthed from Scorched Hearts: Women Respond to War; Stories Through Theories / Theories Through Stories: Native American Storytelling and Critique.
McGlennen served on the editorial board for Studies in American Indian Literatures for 14 years and was elected the Association for the Studies in American Indian Literatures’ president from 2020-2023.
Research and Academic Interests
Native American Studies
Contemporary Literature
Contemporary Poetry
Departments and Programs
Courses
AMST 316 Senior Project Lab Intensive
AMST/ENGL 355 Twenty- and Twenty-First Century Poetry
Selected Publications
Indigenous Poetics, (co-edited collection with Inés Hernández-Ávila) Michigan State University Press, American Indian Studies Series, forthcoming 2025
Our Bearings, University of Arizona Press, Sun Tracks Series, Jan. 2020
Creative Alliances: The Transnational Designs of Indigenous Women’s Poetry, University of Oklahoma Press, American Indian Literature and Critical Studies Series, Aug. 2014
(Winner of the Beatrice Medicine Award for Outstanding Scholarship in American Indian Studies)
Fried Fish and Flour Biscuits, Salt Publishing, Earthworks Series, Nov. 2010
“Acts of Attention: Communal Aesthetics in Kimberly Blaeser’s Poetry,” in Post-Indian Aesthetics: Affirming Indigenous Literary Sovereignty, Eds. Connie Jacobs and Debra Barker, University of Arizona Press, 2022
“Inuit Agencies: Arctic Art Cooperatives and Indigenous Resistance,” in Visualities:Volume II, Ed. Denise Cummings, Michigan State University Press, 2019
“Chasms and Collisions: Native American Women’s Decolonial Labor,” in Transmotion, Eds. James MacKay et. al, special issue “Indigenous Genocide in America,” Fall 2018, Vol. 4:2.
(Finalist for the Beatrice Medicine Award for Best Essay in American Indian Studies)
“Poetry as Discovery,” in Reflecting Pool: Poets and the Creative Process, Codhill Press, Ed. Larry Carr, August 2018. (Finalist 2019 Next Generation Indie Book Awards)
“Fibrous Future: Beyond Erasure in the Works of Brian Jungen, Velma Kee Craig, and Ashley Browning,” Institute of American Indian Arts’ exhibition Connective Tissue: New Approaches to Fiber in Contemporary Native Art, July 2017-January 2018
“By My Heart”: Gerald Vizenor’s Almost Ashore and Bear Island: The War at Sugar Point,” in Transmotion, Eds. James MacKay et. al., Fall 2015, Vol. 1:2
“Crow Commons: Creative Correspondences and Virtual Affiliations,” in Mediating Indianess, Ed. Cathy Waegner, Michigan State University Press, 2015
“Horizon Lines, Medicine Painting, and Moose Calling: The Visual/Performative Storytelling of Three Anishinaabeg Artists” in Centering Anishinaabeg Studies: Understanding the World Through Stories, Eds. Jill Doerfler, Niigon Sinclair, and Heidi Stark, Michigan State University Press and University of Manitoba Press, 2013
“When Night,” in Great Lakes Review, Issue 10, Spring 2023
“Watershed,” in The Poets’ Republic, Issue 10, Winter 2021/2022
“Vermilion,” in Academy of American Poets, Poets.org, A Poem a Day, https://poets.org/poem/vermilion, November 2021
“Meshkadoonaawaa Ikidowinan: Exchanging Words,” (two collaborative poems, “Persistence” and “Sweetgrass,” written with Kimberly Blaeser and Margaret Noodin) in Poetry Magazine, Ed. Su Cho, November 2021
“Our Lives Are Made of Recipes,” in Native Voices: Indigenous American Poetry, Craft and Conversation, Eds. Dean Rader and C. Marie Fuhrman, Tupelo Press, 2019
“Snake River IV,” in Ghost Fishing: An Anthology of Eco-Justice Poetry,” Ed. Melissa Tucky, University of Georgia Press, 2017
“Composition,” in Tending the Fire, Ed. Chris Felver, University of New Mexico Press, 2017
“Snake River III” and “Snake River IV,” Red Ink, Spring 2015
“Bonfire I,” “Bonfire III,” and “Bonfire IV,” Yellow Medicine Review, Spring 2014
“Snake River V,” As/Us: A Space for Women of the World, Issue 3, 2014
“Interwoven,” Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas (Sun Tracks): University of Arizona Press, Allison Adelle Hedge Coke (Editor), Nov. 2011
“Three Poems for Ellia,” Sentence, Jan. 2010
In the Media
Photos
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