About
Circe Sturm is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin's College of Liberal Arts and affiliate faculty in Native American and Indigenous Studies. With 25 years of teaching experience spanning the University of Oklahoma and UT Austin, her scholarship examines race-sovereignty-citizenship intersections in Native and African American communities through settler colonial frameworks.
Education:
- Ph.D., University of California, Davis
Her research critically analyzes racial formation, tribal sovereignty, and indigenous identity politics across Native North America, Central America, and Europe. Fieldwork with Cherokee and Freedmen communities informs her exploration of dominance-resistance dynamics and subjectivity within colonial structures, consistently bridging academic theory and social justice praxis.
Recent publications (2016-2023) demonstrate evolving engagement with ontological anthropology, Black-Indigenous relations, and demographic politics of race. Key themes include sovereignty recognition struggles, racial classification systems, and the material consequences of settler colonial logics across legal, demographic, and cultural domains.
Author of award-winning books Blood Politics (2002) and Becoming Indian (2011), her work is widely cited by scholars, tribal citizens, legal professionals, and journalists. Public intellectual contributions include New York Times features and NPR interviews.
Sturm has mentored generations of students through courses including Cultural Anthropology, Mapping Indigenous Austin, and Oral History of Native Texas. Her public lectures for entities like the US Forest Service and New York Public Library demonstrate deep commitment to community-engaged scholarship beyond academia.
