Indigenous Media Ecologies, edited by Jill Doerfler, Oliver Scheiding, and Cristina Stanciu, will be published in December 2026 with the University of Nebraska Press. To preorder the, download this flyer!
Indigenous Media Ecologies explores some of the impacts that Indigenous peoples have had on media innovations and changes by repurposing Western print and digital technologies. The contributors to this volume, a set of international Indigenous studies scholars, consider Indigenous media ecologies as an assemblage of formal, material, and affective inscriptions that depend not only on Indigenous writers, editors, readers, activists, and tribal community networks but also on Western technology and Indigenous craftsmanship. Indigenous media ecologies are complex, hybrid, and multifaceted; they affect human life environments and demonstrate Indigenous peoples’ involvement in media and communication technologies.
The four parts of Indigenous Media Ecologies distinguish between period-specific (print) technologies, and digital and post-digital
media tools and practices. This volume investigates Indigenous media ecologies and the role of both traditional and new technologies in Indigenous diasporic, transnational, and linguistic communities across the Americas and the Pacific Islands, focusing on serial print publications, film, podcasts, museums, and other forms of storytelling and poetry in the digital age.
Jill Doerfler (White Earth Anishinaabe) is a professor of American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. Oliver
Scheiding is a professor of North American literatures and early American studies at the Obama Institute for Transnational
American Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. Cristina Stanciu is a professor of English and director of the
Humanities Research Center at Virginia Commonwealth University.
“With an impressive and wide-ranging set of essays, Indigenous Media Ecologies reflects the diversity and interconnectedness of Indigenous expression across languages, forms, and time. Whether you are interested in video poems or tweets, newspapers or zines, you will find research that is vital, grounded, and powerful in the pages of this wonderful new volume. This is an outstanding contribution to media studies, rooted in Indigenous communities, languages, methods, and politics.”
—BETH PIATOTE, author of Domestic Subjects: Gender, Citizenship, and Law in Native American Literature
“With its historical breadth and inclusive approach to genre, language, and platform, Indigenous Media Ecologies offers multiple entry points to the study of Indigenous peoples’ innovative strategies for effectively communicating within—and, importantly,
against—the evolving conditions of settler colonialism.”
—Chadwick Allen, author of Earthworks Rising: Mound Building in Native Literature and Arts
Co-organized with the Humanities Research Center at Virginia Commonwealth University, Prof. Dr. Oliver Scheiding (JGU, Mainz) and Dr. Cristina Stanciu (VCU) hosted the symposium "Indigenous Print Cultures, Media, and Literatures" at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. With a variety of speakers from all over the world (USA, Canada, New Zealand, France, and Germany, the symposium brought together experts in the field to discuss new work, current trends, and upcoming projects. Please find an outline of the program below, and click