SAIO 50 for 50: Dr. Beth Piatote

This Week's Spotlight:  Dr. Beth Piatote ('04, M.A. Modern Thought and Literature, '07, Ph.D. Modern Thought and Literature)

Dr. Piatote (Nez Perce, Colville Confederated Tribes) is an Associate Professor of Native American Studies and Comparative Literature, Chair of the Designated Emphasis in Indigenous Language Revitalization, which she helped create, at the University of California-Berkeley. She is the author of award-winning book Domestic Subjects: Gender, Citizenship, and Law in Native American Literature and The Beadworkers: Stories, which was longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize and the PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and shortlisted for the California Independent Booksellers Association Golden Poppy Award. Her current projects include a series of scholarly essays on Indigenous law through sensory representations of sound, vision, synaesthesia, and haunting in 20th century literary works; essays on Indigenous language revitalization; a novel, a poetry collection, and further development of her play, Antíkoni, which was selected for the 2020 Festival of New Plays at the Autry. She has held several artist residencies and frequently teaches writing at Fishtrap: Writing and the West and other workshops.

Dr. Piatote is involved in ongoing efforts to repatriate ancestors from museums as part of a larger movement of reparation and redress, and currently serves on the International Council of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association.

In addition to her Stanford degrees, Dr. Piatote holds bachelors degrees in history and German from Bethel College and a master’s in international studies from the University of Oregon.  

Dr. Beth Piatote's Interview