Joseph M. Pierce
Founding Director, Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative (NAIS)
Humanities Building 1139
Joseph M. Pierce is a citizen of Cherokee Nation, Professor in the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature, and Founding Director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative at Stony Brook University. A scholar, writer, and curator, his work brings Native American and Indigenous studies into conversation with Latin American studies, visual culture, and queer and trans studies. His research explores questions of kinship, relationality, Indigenous sovereignty, and the possibilities of repair.
He is the author of Speculative Relations: Indigenous Worlding and Repair (Duke University Press, 2025), winner of the 2026 Best Subsequent Book in Native American and Indigenous Studies Prize and recipient of an Honorable Mention for the American Studies Association's John Hope Franklin Publication Prize, and Argentine Intimacies: Queer Kinship in an Age of Splendor, 1890–1910 (SUNY Press, 2019), winner of the Nineteenth Century Section Best Book Award from the Latin American Studies Association. His scholarship has appeared in Latin American Research Review, GLQ, October, Art Journal, and Victorian Studies, among other journals, as well as in popular outlets like Hyperallergic, TruthOut, and Indian Country Today.
From 2024 to 2025, he was Ford Foundation Scholar in Residence at the Museum of Modern Art, and he is currently collaborating on an exhibition examining Native American artists and cultural production in downtown New York during the 1980s. With SJ Norman (Wiradjuri), he is co-curator of Knowledge of Wounds, a series of Indigenous-led performances and gatherings.
Personal website: www.josephmpierce.com
Recently taught courses
Graduate Seminars
- SPN 612: Red: Theory and Praxis
- SPN 612: Decoloniality and Queer Studies
- SPN 612: Thirst: Sex and Being
- SPN 609: Literary and Cultural Theories
Undergraduate Courses
- HUS 150: Indigenous Cultures of Latin America
- HUS 254: Latin America Today
- SPN 405/532: Indigenous Cultures: Abya Yala
- SPN 405/532: Hispanic Visual Cultures
Recent Publications
- Speculative Relations: Indigenous Worlding and Repair. Duke University Press, 2025.
- Argentine Intimacies: Queer Kinship in an Age of Splendor, 1890–1910. SUNY Press, 2019.
- “Unpronounceable and Unspellable: The Story of John Wallace.” In “Our Own Garden of American Heroes: 27 Responses.” October 197 (Summer 2026).
- “¿Dónde está el deseo?” LL Journal 21.2 (2026). Special Issue: Homage to Claudia Rodríguez.
- With Jodi A. Byrd, “Settler-Colonial Elimination and the Dobbs Decision: Relationality, Indigenous Kin-Making, and Queer Responsibilities.” GLQ 30.1 (2024).
- “Altar, Tender: Sitting with devynn emory’s can anybody help me hold this body.” Art Journal 82.3 (2023).
- “I Monster: Embodying Trans and Travesti Resistance in Latin America.” Latin American Research Review 55.2 (2020).