Elizabeth Rule
Assistant Professor
Critical Race Gender and Culture Studies
Degrees
PhD American Studies Brown University 2019 MA American Studies Brown University 2014 BA American Studies Yale University 2013
Favorite Spot on Campus
CRGC office
Bio
Dr. Elizabeth Rule (enrolled citizen of the Chickasaw Nation) is an Assistant Professor of Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies at American University in Washington, DC.
Rule’s research on issues in her Native American community has been featured in the Washington Post, Matter of Fact with Soledad O’Brien, The Atlantic, Newsy, and NPR. She is also a published author, releasing scholarly articles in American Quarterly (“Seals, Selfies, and the Settler State: Indigenous Motherhood and Gendered Violence in Canada,” December 2018) and the American Indian Culture and Research Journal (“The Chickasaw Press: A Source of Power and Pride,” Fall 2018). Rule has two forthcoming monographs. The first, Reproducing Resistance: Gendered Violence and Indigenous Nationhood, links Native women's reproductive justice issues and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women crisis; this work received the Julien Mezey Award for best dissertation from the Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities in 2020. Rule’s second monograph, Indigenous DC: Native Peoples and the Nation’s Capital, is currently under contract with Georgetown University Press. This book analyzes historical and contemporary sites of Indigenous importance in the District of Columbia and emphasizes that all American land is Indian land.
Beyond the classroom, Rule continues her work as an educator by presenting her research and delivering invited talks on Native American issues. More than 100 public speaking engagements and interviews have taken her across three continents and to seven countries. Venues for such presentations include the United Nations Association-USA, the Institut des Amériques in Paris, France, the National Congress of American Indians, the Women’s and Gender Studies Intellectual Forum at MIT, the National Gallery of Art, and more.
Rule is the creator of the Guide to Indigenous Lands Project. In July 2019, she created the Guide to Indigenous DC, a mobile application and digital map of Indigenous sites of importance in the nation's capital, which received media coverage on more than thirty outlets. Building upon the success of this inaugural app, Rule has since developed a Guide to Indigenous Baltimore, launching in November 2021 in collaboration with local community partners, created and presented a prototype for a Guide to Chickasaw Culture, Country, and Community, and more. She used her tenure as a 2020-2021 MIT Solve Indigenous Community Fellow to expand this work.
Previously, Dr. Rule has held posts as Director of the AT&T Center for Indigenous Politics and Policy and Faculty in Residence at George Washington University, 2020-2021 MIT Solve Indigenous Communities Fellow, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies Collaborative at American University, Ford Foundation Fellow, and Predoctoral Fellow at MIT. Rule received her PhD and MA in American Studies from Brown University and her B.A. from Yale University.
