Inés Hernández-Ávila (Nez Perce/Tejana)

Professor, Native American Studies

B.A., M.A., Ph.D., English, University of Houston

Affiliated Faculty, Performance Studies, Comparative Literature, and Human Rights Studies

Co-Director, 2013-2016, UCD Mellon-funded Initiative, "Social Justice, Culture and (In)Security"; Lead Director, 2014-2015--Theme: Global Indigeneities

Site Coordinator, May, 2011 Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) conference
 

Professor Hernandez-Avila is Niimiipuu/Nez Perce, of Chief Joseph's band, enrolled on the Colville Reservation, Washington, on her mother's side, and Tejana (and Mexican Indigenous) on her father's side. A scholar, poet, and visual artist, her research and teaching focus on contemporary Indigenous literature of the Americas, and Indigenous religious traditions. She is a Ford Foundation Fellow at the doctoral and postdoctoral levels, and a member of the Society of Senior Ford Fellows. She is one of the six founders of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA). She received the Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award for her work mentoring graduate students (2009), and she also received the Outstanding Mentor Award from the Consortium for Research on Women.

She is active in the following professional associations: NAISA, LASA (Latin American Studies Association), MLA (Modern Language Association), and the AAR (American Academy of Religion), particularly with the Native Traditions in the Americas Group.  From 2013-2016, she was Co-Director of the three-year UCD Social Justice Initiative funded by the Mellon Foundation: http://socialjusticeinitiative.ucdavis.edu/. During Fall 2015, she was a member of a Residential Research Group (RRG) on "The History of Mortality" at the UC Humanities Research Institute, UC Irvine. In April 2017, she received the Frank Bonilla Public Intellectual Award from the Latino Studies section of the Latin American Studies Association annual meeting in Lima, Peru. The Frank Bonilla award cited Professor Hernández-Ávila's "tireless mentoring of junior scholars" and her work as a "feminist pioneer." In August 2017, she received a Community Award from the Organización de Organizaciones, Chiapas, Mexico, for her work as an ally to the cultural and linguistic revitalization movements of Mayan and Zoque people in Chiapas. In Fall 2019 she began to develop formal relationships with Mapuche scholars and poets from Chile. She is a member of the luk'upsíimey/North Star Collective, a Niimiipuu creative writers' group, which began in September 2020.

As a faculty member in Native American Studies, Professor Hernández-Ávila served twice as department chair (1996-1998 and 2010-2013). During her first term as chair, she led the process of getting the graduate program written, submitted, and approved on the campus and in the UC system. In this first term, she worked with Professor Stefano Varese to generate campus and systemwide funding to sponsor and host "Indigenous Intellectual Sovereignties: A Hemispheric Convocation" (with gratitude to Robert Warrior for the term), the first binational conference on Indigenous Studies, held in Spring 1998 on the Davis campus, and in Oaxaca, Oaxaca, Mexico, in August 1998. In 2008, she, along with Stefano Varese, organized the international conference, "Discursive Practices: The Formation of a Transnational Indigenous Poetics." In 2010, she worked with colleagues Stefano Varese and Victor Montejo to submit a successful Department of State three-year grant, "Native American/ Indigenous Studies Across Borders: Capacity Building for Graduate Study in Mexico and Guatemala." She continues to pursue her hemispheric work in Mexico (with a special focus on Chiapas), and Chile. She regularly offers a UCD Study Abroad course in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, on literary and social movements.

Professor Hernández-Ávila has long been a bridge between Native American Studies and Chicanx Studies, in her scholarship, her creative work, and her activism. Beginning in 1990, she became active with the Chicana/Latina Research Center (CLRC), and subsequently served as a steering committee member, as Director, and as Co-Director. until approximately 2009, when the center (and other similar centers in the UC system) lost their funding. For information on the CLRC, see: https://clrc.ucdavis.edu/.

Research and teaching interests:

Native American/Indigenous Poetry; Contemporary Indigenous literature of Mexico and Chile; Indigenous Religious Traditions; Native American Literature in Performance; the relationship of creativity, spirituality, autonomy, and social justice; cultural (trans)formations of identity and community; creative writing: poetry, creative non-fiction, short fiction; the recovery of her Niimiipuu language.

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Selected Publications:

• Latina Feminist Group (of which Inés Hernández-Avila is a member), eds., Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonios, Duke UP, 2001. (Selected as one of the ten best books of 2001 by the Gustavus Myer Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights).
• Inés Hernández-Avila and Gail Tremblay, eds., Special Issue on Indigenous Women, Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies, Vol. 23, No. 2 (2002).
• Inés Hernández-Avila and Domino Renee Perez, eds., Special issue of SAIL: Studies in American Indian Literature, “Indigenous Intersections: American Indians and Chicanas/os in Literature” (2003).
• Inés Hernández-Avila, ed., Reading Native Women: Critical/Creative Representations, Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press (June 2005)
• Inés Hernández-Ávila and Norma E. Cantú, eds., Entre Guadalupe y Malinche: Tejanas in Literature and Art (February 2016)--http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books/hernandez-avila-cantu-entre- guadalupe-malinche
• Hernández-Ávila, Inés, chapter, “Manifiesto de Memoria: (Re)Living the Movement Without Blinking,” Chicana Movidas! New Narratives of Activism and Feminism in the Movement Era, eds. Maria Cotera, Dionne Espinoza, University of Texas Press, 2018.
• Hernández-Ávila, Inés, creative non-fiction, “Reflections on Dignity from a Woman who Walks Tall,” About Place [online] Journal, Volume V, Issue III (May 2019), special issue, “Dignity as an Endangered Species in the 21st Century,” guest editor, Pam Uschuk. https://aboutplacejournal.org/issues/dignity-as-an-endangered-species/identity/ines-hernandez-avila/
• Hernández-Ávila, Inés, chapter, “Spirit Crossings: A Nimipu/Tejana Cultural Perspective on Mortality and Death,” Anima Mundi: Voices from Many Shores, eds. Frédérique Apffell-Marglin and Stefano Varese, Peter Lang Press, 2020.
• Hernández-Ávila, Inés, article, "La literatura Indígena y la palabra autónoma de los pueblos originarios: Una perspectiva trans-Indígena y auto-etnográfica," ESLA: English Studies in Latin America/A Journal of Cultural and Literary Criticism, No. 18 (January 2020).

• Hernández-Ávila, Inés, article, “A Creative Meditation on the Aesthetics of Mestizaje: The Promise of Kinstallatory Relations,” Aztlan: A Journal of Chicanx Studies, 46:2 (Fall 2021), 221-233.

• Hernández-Ávila, Inés, chapter, “Coyotean Rhetoric: A Trans-Indigenous Reading of Peter Blue Cloud’s Elderberry Flute Song, for Native American Rhetoric, ed., Lawrence Gross, University of New Mexico Press, 2021.

Undergraduate Courses:

• NAS 157 Native American Religion and Philosophy
• NAS 181A Native American Literature, Fiction
• NAS 181C Native American Literature, Poetry
• NAS 184 Contemporary Indigenous Literature of Mexico (Study Abroad)
• NAS 188 Special Topics in Native American Literary Studies

• NAS 185 Native American Literature in Performance--Students in NAS 185 work with the instructor throughout the quarter to create a full-length stage production that is performed publicly twice at a campus venue (often the Wyatt Pavilion).

Graduate Courses:

• NAS 200 Basic Concepts in Native American Studies (shared with two other faculty)
• NAS 257 Indigenous Religious Traditions of the Americas
• NAS 254 Native American Literature
• NAS 202 Advanced Topics in NAS, Workshop: Scholarly and Creative Writing
• NAS 246 Native American/Indigenous Research Methodologies (shared with one other faculty)

Summer Abroad Course:

• NAS 184 | Chiapas: Indigenous Literary and Social Movements, Chiapas, Mexico, 2008, 2012, 2017. This course has also been taught in Mexico City, as Contemporary Indigenous Literature of Mexico). NAS 184 can be taken for graduate level credit as well; students would enroll in an NAS 202 Special Topics seminar.

Class Projects and Archives

• "Ometeotl Moyocoyatzin and Ancient Nahuatl Contemplative Practice", NAS 157 Fall 2007.

International Indigenous Literature Conference:

Discursive Practices: The Formation of a Transnational Indigenous Poetics: https://discursive.ucdavis.edu/