Ahimsa BodhranBodhran portrait

Areas of Interest

  • Comparative Ethnic Studies
  • Indigenous Studies
  • Women of Color Studies
  • Queer People of Color Studies

Biography

Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán received his A.A. in Liberal Studies from City College of San Francisco, B.A. in Women Studies from San Francisco State University, M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at Michigan State University, where he is a Dean's Recruitment Fellow in the College of Arts and Letters. His award-winning poetry and nonfiction have appeared in over eighty publications in the U.S., Canada, and England. A grassroots community organizer and activist for two decades, he is a Comparative Ethnic Studies scholar working at the intersection of Indigenous Studies, Women of Color Studies, and Queer People of Color Studies, methodologically informed by Literary Studies, History, and Rhetoric and Composition. As an instructor, he has taught on the East and West Coasts and now in Michigan. Bodhrán began as a teaching assistant in Women Studies at San Francisco State University while still an undergraduate, and in Asian American Studies at City College of San Francisco shortly after graduation. He has since taught in the English Department of Brooklyn College and the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures and Program in American Studies at Michigan State University.

Bodhrán has presented his critical work at numerous national conferences. He has also conducted archival research at the Newberry Library in Chicago as part of an invited seminar sponsored by the D'Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian History, and at Stanford University, San Francisco State University, The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society, and San Francisco Public Library first through a Summer Retention Fellowship and then a Graduate Student Research Enhancement Award, both from Michigan State University. His dissertation examines how three Indigenous women rhetors—Haunani-Kay Trask, Cherríe Moraga, and Beth Brant (Degonwadonti)—are rescripting nationalisms through queer and womanist lenses, in dialogue with their respective Kanaka Maoli, Chicana/o, and Kanien'kehaka communities, and their articulation of intersecting corporeal, terrestrial, and cultural sovereignties.