The Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) Program at UT Austin is pleased to introduce a new NAIS Faculty Talks lecture series intended to highlight the work and research of NAIS-affiliated faculty members. 

For the inaugural NAIS Faculty Talk, we are thrilled to welcome Professor Jennifer Graber for a presentation entitled “Wovoka’s Gifts: The Material Culture of the 1890 Ghost Dance." In this talk, Professor Graber will present on a chapter from her new book project entitled "The World Renewed: Ghost Dancing Across Native North America,” which focuses on Native actors, sources, and epistemologies in the so-called Ghost Dance of 1890.

Professor Graber is Gwyn Shive, Anita Nordan Lindsay, and Joe & Cherry Gray Professor of Religious Studies at UT Austin and an active member of the NAIS affiliated faculty, previously serving as NAIS's Associate Director, Undergraduate Certificate Faculty Advisor, and NAIS Advisory Council member. Dr. Graber has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities and is currently on research leave during the 2024-2025 academic year.

Professor Graber works on Native American religions, religion and violence, and inter-religious encounters in American prisons and on the American frontier. Her first book, The Furnace of Affliction: Prisons and Religion in Antebellum America, explores the intersection of church and state during the founding of the nation's first prisons. Her latest book, The Gods of Indian Country: Religion and the Struggle for the American West, considers religious transformations among Kiowa Indians and Euro-Americans during their conflict over Indian Territory, or what is now known as Oklahoma.

Professor Graber teaches undergraduate classes on the history of religion in the United States, religion in the American West, Native American religions, and religious freedom. She teaches graduate seminars on religion and violence, religion and empire, and approaches to the study of religion in the U.S.

Most recently, Professor Graber has published pieces on ritual peyote ingestion and the 1883 Religious Crimes Code in Indigenous Religious Traditions in Five Minutes and an article on Native American "prophets" in American Religion. Her recent public-facing work includes consultation with the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art and the Sing Sing Prison Museum. Her DEI efforts have included recent service on UT's College of Liberal Arts Diversity and Inclusion Plan Task Force and the Faculty Advisory Committee for the Office of Services for Students with Disabilities. 

This event is free and open to all, and light refreshments will be provided. 

RSVP HERE

Funding support provided by the Braunagel-Brown Excellence Fund for Native American and Indigenous Studies