Mandy Suhr-SytsmaAssociate Teaching Professor

Emory courses taught by Professor Suhr-Sytsma:

• First-Year Writing: Native American Voices
• Gender & Sexuality in Native American Literature
• Major Authors: Louise Erdrich
• Native American Women's Literature
• Youth Literature and the We Need Diverse Books Movement

Mandy Suhr-Sytsma is a teaching professor in the Department of English and a core faculty member in the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative at Emory University. Her interests include Indigenous literatures, children’s/young adult literatures, multiethnic literatures, and rhetoric/composition. She regularly teaches undergraduate literature courses and first-year writing courses with Indigenous studies themes.

Dr. Suhr-Sytsma’s research focuses primarily on Indigenous literatures of North America, especially literary representations of childhood, adolescence, gender, sexuality, activism, and artistic expression. Her first book, Self-Determined Stories: The Indigenous Reinvention of Young Adult Literature (Michigan State University Press, 2019), illuminates how Indigenous young adult literature radically revises YA genre conventions, boldly troubles discourses of diversity, and dynamically imagines Indigenous empowerment in the contemporary era. Her scholarship has also appeared in the journals Studies in the Novel, Studies in American Indian Literatures, Children's Literature, Research on Diversity in Youth Literature, Wíčazo Ša Review, and The Writing Center Journal.

In the community, Dr. Suhr-Sytsma has taught for Freedom University, and she often consults with local schools, museums, and libraries. She maintains an annotated list of books and resources on “Learning more about Native Nations,” geared toward K-12 teachers and families. View that resource and learn more about Dr. Suhr-Sytsma’s work at her website, mandysuhrsytsma.weebly.com.