The University of Massachusetts Amherst

Core Faculty

Core Faculty Members:

Sonya Atalay, Anthropology

Dr. Atalay is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and works in engaged anthropology, utilizing community-based participatory and arts-based methods to conduct research in full partnership with indigenous communities. Dr. Atalay’s scholarship crosses disciplinary boundaries, incorporating aspects of cultural anthropology, archaeology, critical heritage studies, and Native American and Indigenous Studies. Most recently, she’s co-produced a series of ethnographic comics about NAGPRA law and practice and is exploring ways that repatriation and reclaiming of tangible/intangible heritage and land-based knowledge can contribute to healing from historical trauma.


Paul Barten, Environmental Conservation

Dr. Barten is a professor in the Department of Environmental Conservation whose work centers on the protection and stewardship of forests and water — essential “natural resources” that are too often regarded as commodities rather than gifts. His long-term interests in environmental history and Native values and life ways focus on the cultural contrasts and conflicts with Euro-American and Euro-Canadian societies in relation to the 21st century imperative to live much more sustainably and actively mitigate climate change.  He teaches NRC 225: Forests & People (which can be upgraded to an NAIS course with a 1-credit independent study) and NRC 579: Cree Culture, Natural Resources and Sustainability — both during the Spring semester.  Prof. Barten is also the NAIS liaison to students, faculty and administrators in the College of Natural Sciences.


Donal CarbaughCommunication

Dr. Carbaugh’s specialties are Native American communication and culture with special emphasis on the relationship between spirit and nature, and areal interest focused among Blackfeet (Amskapi Piikuni).


N.C. Christopher Couch, Comparative LIterature

Dr. Couch has taught courses on Native American and Pre-Columbian art history at all of the 5 Colleges, and teaches courses on word and image in Native American art and literature in the Comparative Literature Program at UMass Amherst.


Laura Furlan, English

Professor Furlan teaches and writes about contemporary Indigenous literatures in English. Her first book, Indigenous Cities: Urban Indian Fiction and the Histories of Relocation, was published in 2017.


Alice Nash, History

Alice Nash is an ally whose courses include Indigenous Peoples of North America, Indigenous Women, Native American Activism in the Northeast, Plymouth 1620: Rethinking 400 Years of History, Indigenous Peoples and the U.N., and Indigenous Peoples in Museums and Archives.  She has served as Director of the UMass Native Studies program and has been director or co-director of four Summer Institutes for Teachers funded by National Endowment for the Humanities (2013, 2015, 2017, 2019) on Teaching Native American Histories.


Samuel Redman, History

Dr. Redman’s specialties include history, history of museums, history of anthropology, the New Deal, oral history, and United States history.


Stan StevensGeoSciences

Dr. Stevens’ teaching and research as a human geographer and political ecologist focus on two related themes: Indigenous peoples’ knowledge, values, land use and conservation institutions and practices (with long-term collaborative work with Indigenous Sherpa leaders and communities in the Nepal Himalaya) and the international development and implementation of rights-based conservation law and policy.  He teaches an undergraduate course on Indigenous peoples and conservation (Geography 450) and a graduate seminar on Indigenous peoples and protected areas (Geography 693PA), which is open to undergraduates with permission.