Assistant Professor

American Literary Studies

Director of Institute for American Indian Research (IFAIR)

Research Areas

Native American literature and literary criticism

Contact Information

Email: hernands@unm.edu 
Office Location: Humanities 362

Biography

Sarah Hernandez (Sicangu Lakota) is an assistant professor of Native American literature and the director of the Institute for American Indian Research at the University of New Mexico. She is the literature and legacy officer for the Oak Lake Writers Society, an Oceti Sakowin-led nonprofit for Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota writers. Under Sarah’s leadership, the Society launched #NativeReads: Great Books from Indigenous Communities, a national reading campaign that increases knowledge and awareness of the Oceti Sakowin literary tradition. She has also published articles in the Wicazo Sa Review, Studies in American Indian Literature, English Language Notes, and Great Plains Quarterly.

Sarah's forthcoming book, We Are the Stars: Colonizing and Decolonizing the Oceti Sakowin Literary Tradition, will be published in February 2023 by the University of Arizona Press in the U.S. and the University of Regina Press in Canada. We Are the Stars recovers the literary record of early and contemporary Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota women who have served as our tribes’ traditional culture keepers and culture bearers for millennia. Women and land form the core themes of this book, which advances discussions about settler colonialism, nationalism, literature, and gender.