Biography
Associate Vice Provost, Office for Academic Personnel and Faculty
In his role as Associate Vice Provost, Professor Allen oversees the area of Inclusive Excellence within the Office for Academic Personnel and Faculty, which promotes the hiring, retention, and success of a diverse and inclusive faculty at the University of Washington. He works closely with the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity (OMA&D) to implement recruitment and retention goals articulated in the university-wide Diversity Blueprint and to support provisions of the Faculty Code that recognize excellence in research, teaching, and service that promotes diversity and equity.
Scholarly Areas of Specialization
Trans-Indigenous literary studies; Native American, Maori, and Oceanic literatures and cultures; postcolonial literatures and theory; frontier studies and US western literature
Scholarly Activities and Interests
Professor Allen’s scholarship centers on studies of contemporary Native American and global Indigenous literatures, other expressive arts, and activism. He is author of the books Blood Narrative: Indigenous Identity in American Indian and Maori Literary and Activist Texts (Duke UP, 2002), Trans-Indigenous: Methodologies for Global Native Literary Studies (U of Minnesota P, 2012), Earthworks Rising: Mound Building in Native Literature and Arts (U of Minnesota P, 2022), and the forthcoming Transit: Serpent Mound Crossing Space, Time, Discourse (U of Chicago P, 2026). He is also co-editor, with Beth Piatote, of The Society of American Indians and Its Legacies (a special combined issue of the journals Studies in American Indian Literatures and American Indian Quarterly, 2013). Professor Allen served as editor for the journal Studies in American Indian Literatures between 2012 and 2017, and he served as the 2013-2014 President of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA). At the UW, he helped found the Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies (CAIIS) and served as one of its inaugural co-directors in 2018-2021. In addition to his primary work on Indigenous self-representation, Professor Allen has a strong secondary interest in US frontier literature and the popular western, and he has written extensively on the Lone Ranger and Tonto.
Research
Selected Research
- Allen, Chadwick. “Post-Removal Mounds: Earthworks Rising in Oklahoma.” Native American and Indigenous Studies 11.2 (Fall 2024): 1-35.
- Allen, Chadwick. "The Trans-Indigenous Lens: A Re-recognition." Comparative Literature 75.3 (September 2023): 283-97. Download PDF
- Allen, Chadwick. Earthworks Rising: Mound Building in Native Literature and Arts. University of Minnesota Press, 2022.
- Allen, Chadwick. “Vital Earth / Vibrant Earthworks / Living Earthworks Vocabularies.” Routledge Handbook of Critical Indigenous Studies. Ed. Brendan Hokowhitu, Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Steve Larkin, and Chris Andersen. London: Routledge, 2021. 215-28. Download PDF
- Allen, Chadwick. “Propulsive Energies.” Theories and Methodologies: On Tommy Orange’s There There. PMLA 135.3 (May 2020): 551-58. Download PDF
- Allen, Chadwick. “(So Many) Opportunities for Teaching Native Nonfiction.” Rev. of Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers, ed. Elissa Washuta and Theresa Warburton. Studies in American Indian Literatures 32.3-4 (Fall-Winter 2020): 202-20. Download PDF
- Allen, Chadwick. “Charting Comparative Indigenous Traditions.” Cambridge History of Native American Literature. Ed. Melanie Benson Taylor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 447-64. Download PDF
- Allen, Chadwick. “Productive Tensions: Trans/national, Trans-/Indigenous.” The World, the Text, and the Indian: Global Dimensions of Native American Literature. Ed. Richard Scott Lyons. Albany: SUNY Press, 2017.
- Allen, Chadwick. “Performing Serpent Mound: A Trans-Indigenous Meditation.” Theatre Journal 67.3 (October 2015). Download PDF
- Allen, Chadwick. “Re-scripting Indigenous America: Earthworks in Native Art, Literature, Community.” Twenty-First Century Perspectives on Indigenous Studies: Native North America in (Trans)Motion. Ed. Birgit Daewes, Karsten Fitz, and Sabine N. Meyer. New York and London: Routledge. 2015.
- Allen, Chadwick. “Decolonizing Comparison: Toward a Trans-Indigenous Literary Studies.” The Oxford Handbook of Indigenous American Literature. Ed. James H. Cox and Daniel Heath Justice. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. 2014.
- Allen, Chadwick. “Tonto as Taxidermy.” Native American and Indigenous Studies 1.1 (Spring 2014).
- Allen, Chadwick. “Introduction: Locating the Society of American Indians.” The Society of American Indians and Its Legacies. Ed. Chadwick Allen and Beth H. Piatote. Special combined issue, Studies in American Indian Literatures (25.2) and American Indian Quarterly 37.3. (Summer 2013).
- Allen, Chadwick. Trans-Indigenous: Methodologies for Global Native Literary Studies. University of Minnesota Press, 2012.
- Allen, Chadwick. “A Transnational Native American Studies? Why Not Studies that are Trans-Indigenous?.” Journal of Transnational American Studies 4.1 (2012).
- Allen, Chadwick. “Omnimedia Marketing: The Case of The Lone Ranger.” A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American West. Ed. Nicolas S. Witschi. Oxford, UK and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. 2011.
- Allen, Chadwick. “Serpentine Figures, Sinuous Relations: Thematic Geometry in Allison Hedge Coke’s Blood Run.” American Literature 82.4 (December 2010).
- Allen, Chadwick. “Tonto on Vacation, or How to Be an Indian Lawyer.” Canadian Review of American Studies 39.2 (2009).
- Allen, Chadwick. Blood Narrative: Indigenous Identity in American Indian and Maori Literary and Activist Texts. Duke University Press, 2002.