Tarren Andrews

Tarren Andrews is an Assistant Professor in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration, specializing in critical Indigenous studies, contemporary Indigenous literatures, and early English studies. She is Bitterroot Salish, a documented descendant of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. She earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Colorado, Boulder, with graduate certifications in Native American and Indigenous Studies; Culture, Language, and Social Practice; and College Teaching. Dr. Andrews’s research reinterprets narratives of early medieval England by placing them in conversation with Indigenous knowledges and theoretical frameworks, particularly through analyses of law and literature. Her forthcoming book examines foundational texts of the early medieval North Atlantic—such as the Domesday Book (England, ca. 1085), the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum (England, ca. 878), and the Old English poem The Wife’s Lament (ca. 10th century)—alongside key legal documents from Turtle Island, including the Dawes Act of 1887, the Hellgate Treaty of 1859, and the Canadian Indian Act of 1876. By illuminating shared logics in these texts she reveals a continuum of settler colonialism with deep historical ties to the pre-contact Anglophone world.

Dr. Andrews is also a scholar of Indigenous storytelling, language revitalization, and translation. A recent essay in Exemplaria, “Harold and Custer on the Slipstream,” explores Indigenous and medieval settler approaches to slipstream sci-fi as a space of Indigenous hope and possibility. She also contributed a “reservation translation” of the opening lines of Beowulf (ln. 1-12) in the 2021 translation by All, crediting the Flathead Indian Reservation, where she grew up, as a co-author in honor of the deep relationship between land and language.

In her teaching, Dr. Andrews brings these perspectives into the classroom. She regularly teaches “Critical Reading Methods in Indigenous Literatures” and “Indigenous Thought and Theory” which immerse students in Indigenous reading practices and theories, encouraging them to engage deeply with Indigenous intellectual traditions. She has previously taught at the University of Montana, Université Jean Jaurès – Toulouse II, Salish Kootenai College, and the University of Colorado, Boulder.