Rate My Professor Joanne Barker

Joanne Barker is a Lenape scholar (citizen of the Delaware Tribe of Indians) and Professor of American Indian Studies in the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University, where she has served since 2003 and currently holds the position of Chair. She earned her Ph.D. in History of Consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Barker's academic interests encompass indigeneity, feminism, and activism; sovereignty; gender, sexuality, and feminist studies; decolonizing the mind; territory and dispossession; self-determination; indigenous feminisms; recognition; and colonial discourse. Her research critically engages with legal, cultural, and political dimensions of indigenous experiences, particularly in relation to state power and recognition processes.

Barker's major publications include the monograph Red Scare: State Discourses of the Indigenous Terrorist (University of California Press, 2021), which was awarded the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association's Best Subsequent Book Prize. She is also the author of Native Acts: Law, Recognition, and Cultural Authenticity (Duke University Press, 2011). As editor, she produced Critically Sovereign: Indigenous Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies (Duke University Press, 2017) and Sovereignty Matters: Locations of Contestation and Possibility in Indigenous Struggles for Self-Determination (University of Nebraska Press, 2005). Notable articles include "Territory as Analytic: The Dispossession of Lenapehoking and the Subprime Crisis" in Social Text (2018), "Decolonizing the Mind" in Rethinking Marxism (2018), "The Corporation and the Tribe" in American Indian Quarterly (2015), and "Self-Determination" in Critical Ethnic Studies (2015). She guest-edited the special issue "Indigeneity, Feminism, Activism" for the American Indian Culture and Research Journal (2020). During the 2022-23 academic year, Barker was a Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Indigenous Studies in the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago. Additionally, she serves on the board of the Sogorea Te Land Trust.