She received her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Arizona. Her teaching and research concentrate on the ways that indigenous peoples of the Americas use literature and other media as forms of social protest and means of achieving justice. Her publications have appeared in Studies in American Indian Literature, MELUS, Aztlán, Intertexts, and Comparative Literature. Her most recent publication is “Literary Didacticism and Collective Human Rights in U.S. Borderlands: Ana Castillo’s The Guardians and Louise Erdrich’s The Round House,” forthcoming in Western American Literature.