Amanda Cobb-Greetham
Chickasaw Nation
Director of Native American Studies, University of Oklahoma & Honoring Nations Board of Governors
Chickasaw Nation
Director of Native American Studies, University of Oklahoma & Honoring Nations Board of Governors
Amanda Cobb-Greetham recently was named the Coca Cola professor and director of the Native American Studies Program in the University of Oklahoma College of Arts and Sciences.
Cobb-Greetham is a member of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma and is a graduate of OU. She comes to the university from Oklahoma State University.
After receiving her doctoral degree in English from OU, Cobb-Greetham has held several academic appointments, including the University of New Mexico, where she founded the Institute for American Indian Research.
From 2007 to 2012, she served the Chickasaw Nation as administrator of the division of history and culture. Also, she helped launch the state-of-the-art Chickasaw Cultural Center in Sulphur, Okla., and directed the museums, archives, language programs and the first tribal publishing house of its kind, the Chickasaw Press, which received the Harvard Award for Excellence in Tribal Self-Governance under her guidance. She continues to serve as editor.
Cobb-Greetham is the author of Listening to Our Grandmothers’ Stories: The Bloomfield Academy for Chickasaw Females, 1852-1949, which was selected as a winner of the American Book Award as well as the North American Indian Prose Award. In addition, she co-edited a collection of essays with Amy Lonetree titled The National Museum of the American Indian: Critical Conversations, released by the University of Nebraska Press in 2008.
Her current research project, For Better, For Worse: Oklahoma’s American Indian Identity, examines the state of Oklahoma’s American Indian identity as it is manifested in popular culture, including commemorations, sculpture, performances, and museums beginning with the famous “marriage” of Miss Indian Territory to Mr. Cowboy Oklahoma on the steps of the Capitol at the time of statehood.
Established in 1994, the Native American Studies Program is housed in the College of Arts and Sciences. It is an interdisciplinary studies program, with classes in history, American Indian languages, law, anthropology, cultural communication and literature. For more information, visit cas.ou.edu/nas.