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Billy J. Stratton

Professor; Liaison for the Cheyenne & Arapaho Sand Creek Descendant Tribal Council

billy.stratton@du.edu

303-871-4157 (Office)

Sturm Hall, 2000 East Asbury Avenue Denver, CO 80208

What I do

Associate Professor of English and Literary Arts, Special Advisor on Native American Partnerships and Programs.

Specialization(s)

20th century literature, 20th century poetry, 21st century literature, 21st century poetry, 19th century U.S., 20th century U.S., affect theory, American historical memory, American literature, American Southwest, American West, apocalyptic literature, captivity narratives, canon formation and literary history, colonialism, contemporary poetry, creative writing, critical theory, cultural and intellectual history, cultural memory, cultural studies, culture and music, dystopian worlds, early America, ecocriticism, environmental philosophy, European philosophy, Fiction writing, film criticism, historiography, history of racial formation, Indigeneity, Indigenous people's politics, Indigenous religion, Indigenous rights, literary and cultural theory, literary history, multiethnic literature, narrative and pop culture, narrative theory, Native American literature, Native American poetics, philosophy and literature, pop culture, postcolonial literature, postcolonial studies, posthumanism, postmodern literature, prose, Science Fiction, semiotics, speculative fiction, trauma studies, Urban Studies, women novelists

Professional Biography

Billy J. Stratton is a first generation college graduate who grew up a hop and a skip away from Loretta Lynn's home in the heart of eastern Kentucky. He earned a BA, with honors, from Miami University (Oxford, Ohio, 2002) in English and Philosophy and a Ph.D in American Indian Studies from the University of Arizona (2008).
His teaching and research circulates around contemporary Native American and American literature, while also teaching special topics in the areas of ecocriticism, dystopian worlds, posthumanism, and creative writing, as well as literature of the American West and South.
His criticism, fiction, commentary, and editorial work has appeared in numerous books by Routledge, Oxford University Press, and Michigan State University Press, and journals such as Arizona Quarterly, Cream City Review, Salon, The Journal of American Culture, The Independent, Wicazo-Sa Review, Rhizomes, SAIL, Big Muddy, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and TIME. He is the author of Buried in Shades of Night: Contested Voices, Indian Captivity, and the Legacy of King Philip's War (2013), while being contributing editor to The Fictions of Stephen Graham Jones: A Critical Companion (2016).
Finally, he has been instrumental in efforts to create dialogue and historical understanding at the University of Denver around the issue of the Sand Creek massacre.

Degree(s)

  • MA, American Indian Studies, University of Arizona, 2014
  • Ph.D., American Indian Studies, University of Arizona, 2008
  • BA, English/Philosophy, Miami University, 2002

Professional Affiliations

  • International Exchange Alumni-Fulbright
  • Modern Library Association
  • Native American Literature Symposium
  • Native American/Indigenous Studies Association
  • Western Literature Association

Research

Contemporary Native American literature and poetics, 20th-21st century American literature, Native American cultures, societies, and histories, especially of Colorado and the West, transnationalism, public intellectualism.

Areas of Research

Native American literature
global indigenous studies
Indigenous knowledge
American culture studies
Trauma and Affect studies
Posthumanism
Critical theory
Popular culture.

Presentations

Stratton, B. (2019). Agency, Ethics, Justice in the PostHuman Age. Artificial Intelligence Lunch & Learn. University of Denver: The AI Summit Core Planning Committee, Project X-ITE, University of Denver.
Stratton, B. (2018). He's the One Who Fights the Monsters For Us: Confrontations with Monstrosity, Horror, and Evil in the works of Stephen Graham Jones. Western Literature Association. St. Louis, MO: WLA.
Stratton, B. (2017). History, Subjectivity Narrative: The Captivity of Mary Rowlandson through a Different Looking Glass. Northwestern University Early American Literature Lecture Series. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University, English Department.
Stratton, B. (2014). "The Death of Tecumseh and the Making of an American Myth" . 2014 Annual PCA/ACA Conference. Chicago, IL: Popular Culture/American Culture Association.
Stratton, B. (2013). Indian Captivity in the Age of Perpetual Terror. Graduate School of the Humanities Colloquium. Würzburg, Germany: Graduate School of the Humanities, Julius-Maximilians-Universität.

Awards

  • Fulbright Scholar Senior Lecturer , Council for International Exchange of Scholars