Professor
English

Drew Lopenzina

757-683-4033

5022 BATTEN ARTS & LETTERS
NORFOLK, 23529

Drew Lopenzina is professor of Early American and Native American literature. His work has appeared in the journals American Literature, American Quarterly, Native American and Indigenous Stuides and others. His first book Red Ink: Native Americans Picking up the Pen in the Colonial Period (SUNY Press 2012) offers a vital rethinking of indigenous engagements with literacy in America’s colonial milieu, suggesting just how much of what we think we know about colonial literature is based on misunderstanding Native contributions. His second book, Through an Indian's Looking-Glass (UMASS 2017) is a cultural biography of the nineteenth-century Pequot activist, minister, and author William Apess.

Ph.D. in English, University of New Hampshire, (2006)

M.A. in English, University of New Hampshire, (2000)

B.A. in English, University of Massachusetts Amherst, (1998)

Contracts, Grants and Sponsored Research

Lopenzina, A. "Elizabeth Hixon Fellowship for Literary Scholarship" $20,000. 2015 - 2015
Lopenzina, A. "Kate B. & Hall J. Peterson Fellowship resulting in a month long residency at the American Antiquarian Society" $1,800. 2014 - 2014
Lopenzina, A. "American Antiquarian Society’s week long summer seminar on Indigenous Cultures of Print in Early America, Worcester, MA" $1,000. June 2013 - June 2013

Research Interests

Literacy amongst indigenous communities in colonial America. Early Native writers. Dynamics of contact in colonial period.

Articles

Lopenzina, A. (2016). Letter from Barnstable Jail: William Apess and the Memorial of the Mashpee Indians. Journal of Native American and Indigenous Studies 3 (2) , pp. 105-127.
Lopenzina, A. (2015). Le Jeune Dreams of Moose: Altered States among the Montagnais and the Transnationalism of Dreaming. Early American Studies 13 (1) , pp. 3-37.
Lopenzina, A. (2014). The Wedding of John Rolfe and Pocahontas: How to Keep the Thrill Alive after 400 Years of Marriage. Studies in American Indian Literatures 26 (4) , pp. 59-77.
Lopenzina, A. (2010). What to the American Indian is the Fourth of July?: Looking Beyond Abolitionist Rhetoric in William Apess "Eulogy on King Philip". American Literature 82 (4) , pp. 673-699.
Lopenzina, A. (2006). The Whole Wilderness shall Blossom as the Rose’: Samson Occom, Joseph Johnson and the Question of Native Settlement on Cooper’s Frontier. American Quarterly 58 (4) , pp. 1119-1145.
Lopenzina, A. (2003). ‘Good Indian’: Charles Eastman and the Warrior as Civil Servant. American Indian Quarterly 27 (3-4) , pp. 727-757.

Books

Lopenzina, A. (2017). Through an Indian’s Looking Glass: A Cultural Biography of William Apess, Pequot . University of Massachusetts Press.
Lopenzina, A. (2012). Red Ink: Native Americans Picking up the Pen in the Colonial Period. SUNY Press.

Book Chapters

Lopenzina, A. (2016). Early Native Literature Routledge Companion to Native American Literatures (pp. 317-327) New York: Routledge Press.
Lopenzina, A. (2016). The Pequot War 50 Events That Shaped American Indian History; An Encyclopedia of the American Mosaic (pp. 91-108) Santa Barabara, California: Greenwood Press.
Lopenzina, A. (2013). American Literature up to 1800 American Literary Scholarship (pp. 213-238) Chapell Hill: Duke University Press.
Lopenzina, A. (2010). Shadow Casting: Survivance and the Problem of Historical Recovery Gerald Vizenor: Text and Contexts (pp. 208-230) Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Lopenzina, A. (2009). Compromised Currencies: Why Samson Occom is not Pictured on the One Hundred Dollar Bill Sovereignty, Separatism and Survivance: Ideological Encounters in the Literature of Native North America (pp. 17-45) Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press.
Lopenzina, A. (2002). On Becoming a Witness What to Expect When You’re Expected to Teach (pp. 55-62) Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Publishing.
  • 2016: Silver Star Teaching Award,
  • 2011: Award for Outstanding Service in SHSU Faculty Senate, Sam Houston State University

Organizational Chart