Graduate Minor - American Indian and Indigenous Studies | American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program

Apply to the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Graduate Minor

Online AIIS Graduate Minor Application

While earning an graduate minor in American Indian and Indigenous Studies (AIIS) you'll explore the complex histories and contemporary situations of Indigenous communities in North America and across the globe. Our faculty teach AIIS courses in diverse range of topics, including art, art history, anthropology, archaeology, education, fiber science and apparel design, law, linguistics, literature, natural resources, performing and media arts, and more.

With a graduate minor in American Indian and Indigenous Studies, you are uniquely competitive as a multidisciplinary and extradisciplinary thinker. Graduate students in any discipline are encouraged to connect with our Indigenous Graduate Student Association (IGSA) chapter for community and resources. AIISP also offers a limited number of multi-year graduate student desks in Graduate Study Room located on the fourth floor of Caldwell Hall. Explore Our Alumni page to learn more about past students who integrated AIIS coursework into their graduate studies.

Complete the AIIS Graduate Minor Application to get started! You can complete the AIIS Minor Application form at any point while enrolled as a student, even if you haven't taken your first AIIS class yet!

Graduate Minors in AIIS - Student Spotlight

Explore Our Alumni page to learn more about past students who integrated AIIS coursework into their graduate studies.

A woman with black hair and red lips looks off camera to the left. She has a black line drawn above her eyebrows across her forehead, an intricate tattoo patter from her shoulders across her collar bone, and is wearing an intricate silver and gemstone necklace.

Leah Shenandoah, Ph.D. is a Wolf Clan Member of the Onyo’ta:aká: – Oneida Nation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. She is an Indigenous scholar, artist, activist, and musician. In Fall 2024, she earned her Ph.D. in Apparel Design from the School of Human Ecology at Cornell University, along with a Graduate Minor in American Indian and Indigenous Studies from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Her creative and academic work explores Indigenous identity, cultural continuity, and innovation in textile arts, blending traditional Haudenosaunee teachings with contemporary design to foster cultural resilience and intergenerational knowledge sharing.

portrait of a woman with long black hair

Charlotte Logan is a doctoral student in linguistics from Syracuse, New York. After graduating from the University of Oklahoma as an undergraduate with a major in biochemistry and minor in Native American studies, she chose to pursue further study at Cornell due to its location in the Haudenosaunee homelands and the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program. Logan was selected as a Cobell Graduate Summer Research Fellow in 2021, and was one of 10 recipients of the 12 month Cobell Writing-Year Fellowship in 2024. Logan studies Haudenosaunee languages and works on language revitalization through Cornell’s Indigenous Language Program and immersion programs within the Six Nations Confederacy.

Sarah Lavoy-Brunette stands smiling outside on a snowy day.

Sarah LaVoy-Brunette is an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation of Ojibwe and a PhD Candidate in the Medieval Studies Program with a Graduate Minor in American Indian and Indigenous Studies at Cornell University. Her dissertation project, “Converting the Wilderness: The Legacies of Settler Colonialism in Early Medieval England and Hodinǫ̱hsǫ́:nihgeh,” employs critical Indigenous studies to analyze the transcolonial legacies of settler colonialism and Indigenous erasure across the medieval-modern divide. Critically oriented around Place and the role of Land in identity formation, her work discusses the ways in which settler colonial ideologies are embedded in the literary, material, and visual cultures of early medieval England and exported later across Hodinǫ̱hsǫ́:nihgeh (Haudenosaunee homelands).

Graduate Minor Requirements

The American Indian and Indigenous Studies (AIIS) graduate minor is available to graduate students in any field of graduate or professional study at Cornell. The minor is earned upon completion of the following:

Two required graduate-level courses, AIIS 6010 American Indian and Indigenous Speaker Series and AIIS 6000 Critical Approaches to American Indian and Indigenous Studies: Intellectual History
Selection of an AIIS Graduate Field faculty member to serve on the applicant's graduate committee

Connect with an AIIS staff member with any questions about the minor or application process.

Required Graduate Courses

AIIS 6000 - Critical Approaches to American Indian and Indigenous Studies: Intellectual History

This course is an interdisciplinary survey of the literature in Native American Studies. Readings engage themes of indigeneity, coloniality, power, and “resistance”. The syllabus includes some “classical” works in Native American Studies, but also engages with theoretical and historical contributions from scholars in other disciplines.

The course seeks to meet several specific objectives: 1) to situate contemporary theoretical, philosophical, methodological positions in Indigenous Scholarship in relation to both the 20th century development of Indigenous Studies and Western intellectual histories and practices (in Sociology, Anthropology, Literature, Law, etc.); 2) to critically evaluate the geo-political dimensions of Indigenous (academic) knowledge production, specifically in relation to Indigenous Studies in North American with implications and lessons from South America, New Zealand, Australia, Africa and elsewhere; 3) to interpret the primary lineages of Indigenous Studies within the frameworks of decolonization and coloniality; 4) to critically evaluate and reflect on scholarly positionality within Indigenous Studies and academia more generally.

AIIS 6010 - American Indian and Indigenous Studies Speaker Series

This colloquium brings together Cornell and non-Cornell scholars and leaders who engage issues and topics critical to the field of Indigeneity within their own disciplinary categories, such as law, literature, art, architecture, and gender studies, as well as natural and social sciences. The speakers include faculty, graduate students, Indigenous scholars, and community leaders who present their work for review and critique in a public forum. The Speaker Series is a bi-weekly seminar, which welcomes the larger public to attend and partake in the conversation. The Colloquium is offered as a 1-credit graduate-level course (AIIS 6010).

AIIS Faculty Spotlight

Troy Richardson

Program Director

American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program

Associate Professor, Philosophy of Education

American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program

Troy Richardson

(607) 254-4681
TAR37 [at] cornell.edu

Jolene Rickard

Associate Professor, History of Art and Visual Studies, American Studies Program, American Indian and Indigenous Studies

Jolene Rickard

jkr33 [at] cornell.edu

Kurt Jordan

Professor, Anthropology

American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program

Kurt Jordan

kj21 [at] cornell.edu

Our Alumni - Graduate Minor - American Indian and Indigenous Studies

Explore recent alumni with the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Graduate Minor - Explore Our Alumni page for all alumni of AIISP

Leah Shenandoah (Onya’ta:aká:/Oneida) PhD Candidate in Apparel Design; minors in American Indian and Indigenous Studies, Neurobiology - expected 2024
Phoebe Wagner M.P.S. Global Development, Graduate Minor in American Indian and Indigenous Studies 2024
Bruno Seraphin PhD. Sociocultural Anthropology, Graduate Minor in American Indian and Indigenous Studies 2023
Aishwarya Shankar Masters of Landscape Architecture Graduate Minor in American Indian and Indigenous Studies 2023
Frances Sobolak PhD. Linguistics, Graduate Minor in American Indian and Indigenous Studies 2023
Samantha Bosco M.S. Soil Sciences, Graduate Minor in American Indian and Indigenous Studies 2022
Samiha Hamdi M.P.S. Global Development, Graduate Minor in American Indian and Indigenous Studies 2022
Andrew Leon Melissas 2022
Pierre-Elliot (Peter) Caswell PhD. Humanities Scholar, Graduate Minor in American Indian and Indigenous Studies 2021