About Me
My name is Mandy Suhr-Sytsma (pronounced "sir-sight-smuh"). I am a settler (non-Native) scholar currently working on Muscogee Nation homelands at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia as an Associate Teaching Professor in the English Department and core faculty member in the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative. I also directed the Emory Writing Center from 2013 to 2021 and remain involved in the Writing Program. Before moving to Atlanta, I attended graduate school at the University of Connecticut. Before that, I taught English in Sanjo, Japan for a year. Before that, I went to Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And before that I grew up with lots of family and dairy cows in the lovely state of Minnesota. My first book, Self-Determined Stories: The Indigenous Reinvention of Young Adult Literature (2019) is available in Michigan State University Press's American Indian Studies Series. You can order the book at msupress.org. See the research page of this site for more on that and my other research and writing projects.
I've been interested in literature, writing, and teaching since at least middle school. Exploring these areas and their intersection is my work and passion. I enjoy delving deeply into my areas of specialization—Indigenous literature, children's/YA literature, and writing center studies—and my interests, including literary activism, linguistic power dynamics, gender/sexuality, and perspectives on childhood. At the same time, I love that English studies, Indigenous studies, and writing centers are all dynamic interdisciplinary spaces that constantly expand my horizons. Because I study Indigenous-authored literature, including children's and YA, I often get asked for advice and reading recommendations. The 5-page "Learning More about Native Nations" handout linked to below includes some books and resources I frequently recommend. Feel free to share this handout with friends and neighbors as well as students, teachers, librarians, and others. |
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This work by Mandy Suhr-Sytsma is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
