Cobb Regents Award

Dr. Amanda Cobb-Greetham awarded the 2023 Regents’ Award for Superior Professional and University Service and Public Outreach

Bio:
Amanda Cobb-Greetham, Ph.D. (Chickasaw) is the 2021-2022 Beatrice Shepherd Blane Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She serves the University of Oklahoma as a Professor in the Department of Native American Studies. During her tenure at OU, her efforts contributed to the elevation of Native American Studies from a program to a department and the establishment of the recently endowed Native Nations Center for research and community engagement.

Cobb-Greetham is at work on Bright, Golden Haze: Oklahoma/Indian Identity in Myth and Memory, a collection of interrelated essays that places Oklahoma history and mythology at the center of the American story, turning on the perceived fulfillment of manifest destiny and the “conquering” of Native peoples and, specifically, the contestation of such cultural erasure through the production of tribal-specific counter-narratives. The collection includes memoir and critical analysis, archival documents and contemporary cultural texts, and a synthesized, interdisciplinary approach throughout to illustrate the impact of myth and memory on tribal sovereignty and Native lived experience.

Cobb-Greetham has received significant recognition for her previous scholarship, winning the American Book Award for Listening to Our Grandmothers’ Stories: The Bloomfield Academy for Chickasaw Females. In addition, she is the co-editor of The National Museum of the American Indian: Critical Conversations with Amy Lonetree. She has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals and served as the editor of American Indian Quarterly, a leading journal of Native American studies for nine years.

From 2007 to 2012, she served her tribe, the Chickasaw Nation, as the Administrator of the Division of History and Culture. During her tenure, she was instrumental in launching the state-of-the-art Chickasaw Cultural Center in Sulphur, OK and directed the museums, archives, language programs, as well as the Chickasaw Press. The Chickasaw Press, the first tribal publishing house of its kind, received the Harvard Award for Excellence in Tribal Self-Governance under her guidance. In 2018, she received the Chickasaw Nation’s prestigious Dynamic Woman Award.

She serves on the Board of Governors for the Harvard Honoring Nations project. She served on the Board of Trustees of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian for six years (Vice Chair 2019-2021). She is the founding President of The Auntie Project, Native Women of Service, a 501 (c) 3, nonprofit organization.