Lisa Tatonetti

Professor / Graduate Faculty
Ph.D. 2001, Ohio State University

Email: tatonett@ksu.edu
Office: English/Counseling Services Bldg. 238
Phone: (785) 532-6716

Fields of interest:
Queer Indigenous Studies; Ethnic Literature (Native American); Women's Studies; Cultural Studies.

 

Lisa Tatonetti is a settler scholar and a Coffman University Distinguished Teaching Scholar and Donnelly Professor of English at Kansas State University where she studies, teaches, and publishes on queer Indigenous literatures. She helped co-found the K-State Indigenous Faculty and Staff Alliance, was part of the revival of the Kansas Association of Native American Education, and is a member of a state-level committee on Indigenous education. She co-created Kansas State’s Indigenous Peoples Day symposium, which brings in more than 500 students, faculty, and community members to campus to learn more from Indigenous intellectuals and creatives each year. Along the way, she regularly makes good trouble with her Indigenous partners at K-State and beyond.

Tatonetti co-edited Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature (Arizona 2011), which won a Wordcraft Circle Pathfinder Award and a Foreword Review Book of the Year Award. She is the author of The Queerness of Native American Literature (Minnesota, 2014), which won the Thomas J. Lyons Book Award & was chosen for the American Library Association’s Recommended Reading List.

Her most recent book, Written by the Body: Gender Expansiveness and Indigenous Non-cis Masculinities (Minnesota, 2021)--completed with the help of a Rockefeller Fellowship from the National Humanities Center--won the 2022 Beatrice Medicine Award for Best Published Monograph from the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures.

Tatonetti loves teaching and has won six teaching awards, including Kansas State University’s Ron Gaches Lifetime Teaching Award, and has also been recognized for her service contributions. She teaches Indigenous literatures and film, multiethnic literatures, queer studies, and is a proud member of the Cultural Studies track. Originally from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and a graduate of Florida State for her BA and Ohio State for her PhD, Tatonetti currently lives with her covid foster fails, Portia and Puck, in Manhattan, Kansas. C'mon by her office and visit the legendary chicken lamp!