Stephanie A. Sellers

Adjunct Professor

Interdisciplinary Studies

Contact

Email

ssellers@gettysburg.edu

Phone

(717) 337 - 6798

Box

Campus Box 0397

Address

Breidenbaugh Hall
Room 401
300 North Washington St.
Gettysburg, PA 17325-1400

Education

PhD Union Institute & University, 2005
MFA Goddard College, 1996
Other Wilson College. Teaching Certificate. Secondary English, 1994
BA The American University, 1992

Academic Focus

Native American Studies and Women & Gender Studies

Stephanie A. Sellers is a Native American Studies educator who teaches Indigenous literatures in the English Department and topics in Native Studies in the Women, Gender, and Sexualities Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies Programs at Gettysburg College. Sellers holds a doctorate in Native American Studies with an emphasis on Women of the Eastern Woodlands, the first faculty member of the College to do so. Sellers studied with traditional Indigenous Elders who served on her doctoral committee. She has been at the College since 2000, and has designed and teaches 5 courses in the Native American Studies discipline. Sellers was the Inaugural Director of the Gettysburg College Women's Center from 2009--2014 and served on the Academic Steering Committee of the WGS Program for many years. In 2013 she was awarded the College's Faculty Award for Community-Based Engagement and has been a Teaching Award nominee by Student Senate for many years.

Dr. Sellers has published five books, the most recent is Indigenous Women’s Reproductive Traditions: Reclaiming Sovereignty Through 500 Years of Colonization. The work delves into the rich history of Indigenous women’s reproductive practices before European colonization and how those practices were disrupted by European patriarchal structures.

Sellers served on the 2024 awards committee for the Beatrice Medicine Literary Award for the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures. She was on the planning committee at Dickinson College for the Carlisle Indian Boarding School Conference in 2012. She co-founded with GC students the Students for Indigenous Awareness Club in 2017 and was its first Faculty Advisor. Sellers served as the GC Senior Advisor to the Indigenous Land Acknowledgement Committee until 2022. She was also a Founding Board of Director on the Collegiate Women's Leadership Educators Association of the American Association of University Women (2012--2016) in Washington, D.C. During this time, she worked closely with Gettysburg College's Garthwait Leadership Center developing and implementing the Women's Leadership Certificate.

Sellers contributed a chapter to the Routledge Companion to Native American Literature in 2015. Her scholarship on Indigenous Feminisms is included in The Routledge Introduction to Feminist Thought and Action (2019), which won the Routledge 2019 Outstanding Book in the Humanities and Social Sciences Award and the 2019 Outstanding Textbook in the Social Sciences Award. She has presented her scholarship at many international conferences over the years including the MLA, the American Academy of Religion, the Society for the Study of American Women's Literature, the American Society of 18th-Century Studies, the National Women's Studies Association, and the Center for Feminist Art in the Brooklyn Museum, which was definitely the most fun gig of them all!

Courses Taught

Study of ancient and contemporary Native American poetry and fiction with emphasis on academic writing. Students write regularly in response to reading assignments and engage in extensive revision of their work. Close attention is given to the development of academic voice, editing, documentation, critical thinking, research skills, and writing a reflective preface that is representative work from a first year writing course. Offered regularly. Fulfills first-year writing, Global Understanding, and Conceptualizing Diversity requirements. Open to first-year students only.
Interdisciplinary exploration of the pre-Euro-colonial forms of Indigenous writing/communal narratives and the oral tradition and the interrelatedness of these forms, along with the historical, political, and cultural meanings of Native literatures and record-keeping. Emphasis on the power of the story, and the sacredness of Indigenous storytellers and their role in the nation, are central to the course. The course examines the Euro-colonial impacts and disruptions of writing/storytelling practices and how Native Americans respond(ed) to those intrusions. Works of the earliest Native writers post-European arrival, of the Native American Literary Renaissance (1960—70s), and of contemporary Natives are the core of the course. The role of Indian boarding schools, the prevalence of Euro-formed narratives in higher education, perceptions of Native people in Native and non-Native literatures, and the ways Native writers today engage cultural continuance and sovereignty in their works are discussed. Positioning the concepts of “writing” and “mapmaking” from an Indigenous-cultural context is the foundation of our conversations. Course includes readings of Indigenous-centric literary criticism from the journal Studies in American Indian Literatures.
Interdisciplinary exploration of the history, cultural meanings, and contemporary practices of team sports and individual athletes of Indigenous nations of the Americas before and after European contact. The course examines the historic disruptions of these practices by European colonization and how Native Americans respond(ed) to those intrusions. Issues of Indigenous sports mascots, colonial narratives of Native peoples in relation to their physicality and identities, the role of sports at Indian boarding schools, the prevalence of Euro-formed historic narratives of Natives in media today, and critical Indigenous actors in the world of sports are discussed.
The course examines the changing practices in women's healthcare from the holistic, ancient, earth-based traditions that centralized women to the rise of the mechanomorphic American medical system, specifically gynecology. The course examines key historic events that shaped women's healthcare, issues of gender biology, women as medical research subjects, the gardener/mechanic metaphor, the modern medicalization of women's natural cycles, the Wise Woman healing tradition, Chinese medicine and acupuncture, Ayurveda, and issues around women’s personal empowerment. Social issues concerning the control of women's reproduction and the impact of the environment on women's health are addressed. Additional topics include holistic nutrition for females, body image, gender identity, sexual orientation, negotiating young-adult social and emotional challenges, and power and control in intimate relationships. Particular attention is on centralizing women, genderfluid, and trans people in their own healthcare and the impact of politics on their health by race and class.
Study of traditional roles of primarily Eastern Woodlands indigenous women from pre-colonization to contemporary times. Indigenous women’s centrality in their nation’s sociopolitical structures, cosmology, and distribution of wealth is discussed. Additional emphasis is on ceremonial rites for women and girls, and traditional customs relating to sexuality, childbearing, and marriage. Ways in which indigenous women and men balance the responsibilities of their nation are a key topic.

Book Indigenous Women's Reproductive Traditions Lived Places Publishing
Book Daughters Healing from Family Mobbing North Atlantic Books/Penguin Random House
Book Weaving the Legacy: Remembering Paula Gunn Allen West End Press at University of New Mexico
Book Native American Women's Studies: A Primer Peter Lang Publishing
Book Native American Autobiography Redefined Peter Lang Publishing