Shanna Ketchum-Heap of Birds, PhD (Diné/Navajo)
Shanna Ketchum-Heap of Birds is a citizen of the Diné/Navajo Nation where she was born and raised. In 2022, she earned a Ph.D. from Middlesex University in London, England. Her research degree focused on contemporary Native American/Indigenous visual artists and theater and performance studies. Her dissertation, entitled "Indigenous Performance Politics: A Decolonial Perspective of Performative Works by Kent Monkman, Spiderwoman Theater Company, Rebecca Belmore, and James Luna,” advocates that we need a greater decolonial understanding of the complex ways in which contemporary Indigenous artists, and their communities, are positioned differently within a globalized, capitalist system deeply embedded in the multiple layers of imperial and colonial practices.
As a writer and independent scholar, Ketchum-Heap of Birds has published and lectured both nationally and internationally. Recent essays were published in Philosophy, Analytic Aesthetics, and Theater (Routledge, 2024), Beyond Failure: New Essays on the Cultural History of Failure in Theatre and Performance (Routledge, 2018), Artforum International and Wired Italia magazine. Recent lectures were at UNC Art & Art History in North Carolina, Artists Space in NYC, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Nanyang University in Singapore, and Skype/Zoom lectures for the Barcelona Facultat De Geografia; Història Universitat De Barcelona; Museu D’art Contemporani De Barcelona (MACBA) and Shape: A Virtual Artist Residency sponsored by Vinegar Projects: An Artists-Run Space.
For the past 18 years, Ketchum-Heap of Birds has taught variously as an adjunct instructor at the University of Oklahoma, the University of Central Oklahoma, and the University of Tulsa. Dr. Ketchum-Heap of Birds also co-curated Suffer, Dance, Stand: Native Survival (2022) at OK #1 in Tulsa and she is currently board president of Spiderwoman Theater Company (the longest running Native American feminist theater group in the USA).