The Speaker

Joshua Nelson, Cherokee, ED of Native Crossroads Film Festival

Presidential Professor Joshua B. Nelson (Cherokee) is Associate Professor of English and affiliated faculty with Film & Media Studies, Native American Studies, and Women’s & Gender Studies at the University of Oklahoma. He is Co-Producer and Interviewer on the PBS documentary Searching for Sequoyah, directed by James Fortier and produced by LeAnne Howe, which was nationally broadcast in 2021, and he is the Lead Organizer of the Native Crossroads Film Festival & Symposium at OU. He will direct the documentary film The Trail of the Thunderbirds on the 45h Infantry Division during World War II, and he is working on a monograph on representations of the body in Indigenous film. The University of Oklahoma Press published his book Progressive Traditions: Identity in Cherokee Literature and Culture in 2014.

The Series

This event is part of a series of panel discussions at Mount Holyoke College exploring the performance practice issues regarding the performance of the world’s first opera fully sung in Chickasaw, Jerod Impichchaachaacha’ Tate’s Shell Shaker. Moderated by Tate and Tianhui Ng from the Music Department, each session explores an aspect of concern regarding the performance of work by Native American/American Indian/Indigenous creators of musical art. 

In a time of increasing interest in this music, these sessions present perspectives on complex issues that face any performers who are interested in approaching this repertoire. A new topic with a new set of guests meets each session to talk about the subject at hand. Audience members can join students taking Music 173 - Performing Tate’s Shell Shaker to interact with the musicians, scholars and leaders in the panels to glean new insight.