Desmond Hassing

Desmond Hassing is a Lecturer at San Diego State University (SDSU) and a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. He holds a Ph.D. in Theatre and Dance from the University of California, San Diego (2024), with a dissertation examining the role of 'Hollywood Indian' iconography in constructing Western/American identity. His research focuses on Indigenous representation in 20th-century media, including comic books, film, and sports mascots.

He earned an M.A. in Theatre from SDSU (2017) and pioneered projects like the National Indian Project (an annotated bibliography of Indigenous representations in DC/National comics, 1938–1975) and the planned Indigenous Peoples Reading Room, an open-access archive of mid-20th-century Americana.

As an artist, Hassing’s film #stillhere has screened at festivals including the First Nations Film Festival and the Equality International Film Festival. He is active in community theater, serving on the boards of OnStage Playhouse and TYPA, an experimental social justice theater centering teenage artists.