Steffi Dippold

Dr. Steffi Dippold is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Montclair State University, part of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Previously, she held a position at Kansas State University and earned her Ph.D. in 2012 from Stanford University. Her research focuses on pre-1900 American literatures, Native American and Indigenous studies, book history, and material/visual culture, with a particular interest in alternative archives and the cultural dynamics of early colonial interactions.

Her work explores themes such as literacy, orality, and corporality in colonial contact zones, as seen in her forthcoming book Plain as in Primitive: The Figure of the Native in Colonial America, which recontextualizes the Noble Savage model. She has been recognized with prestigious fellowships from institutions like the Huntington Library and the British Library, as well as the Alden Prize for her doctoral research.

Dr. Dippold collaborates with students and local museums to recover voices of marginalized groups through non-textual literacies. Her publications include studies on print ornaments, textual keys, early Native American bookbinding, and Indigenous grammars. She teaches courses emphasizing the multicultural and multilingual realities of colonial America.