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Circe Sturm
American academic from Texas, U.S. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Circe Sturm is a professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Texas, Austin.[1] She is also an actress, appearing mainly in films and commercials.[2][3]
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Background
Circe Dawn Sturm was born in Houston, Texas. She describes her father as being of Mississippi Choctaw descent and her mother as being Italian American.[4] In Blood Politics (2002), Sturm wrote, "I had always known that my paternal grandmother was Mississippi Choctaw on her mother's side and very distantly Cherokee on her father's side."[5] An investigation published in 2025 by Tribal Alliance Against Frauds traced her genealogy, reviewing 888 of her relatives, and found no relatives that were of Cherokee or any Native heritage.[6] Strum has not provided evidence to contradict the findings of the investigation or any proof of her claims of American Indian heritage.
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Career
Sturm writes about Cherokee identity politics and race shifting.[7][8] Blood Politics presents results of her ethnographic fieldwork in the Cherokee Nation from 1995 to 1998.[9] Becoming Indian (2011) discusses the concept of race shifting in more detail.[7][10] Sturm has been interviewed on issues relating to Cherokee identity, such as the Cherokee Freedmen controversy and Elizabeth Warren's claims to Cherokee ancestry.[11][12][13]
Before joining UT Austin, Sturm taught at the University of Oklahoma.[14] Sturm and Craig Cambell launched a project called Mapping Indigenous Texas, to created an interactive tool to teach about Native American tribes in Texas.[15]
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Awards and honors
In 2003, the American Council of Learned Societies named Strum as a ACLS Fellow for her project "Claiming redness: the racial and cultural politics of becoming Cherokee."[16] In 2011, the Southern Anthropological Society gave Circe Strum a James Mooney Award for her book Becoming Indian: The Struggle over Cherokee Identity in the Twenty-first Century.[17]
In 2024, the University of Texas at Austin awarded Sturm and Craig Campbell a 2023–2024 Research & Creative Grant for their project Mapping Indigenous Texas.[18]
Selected publications
Books
Chapters
- Circe Sturm (1996). "Old Writing and New Messages: The Role of Hieroglyphic Literacy in Maya Cultural Activism". In Fischer, Edward F.; Brown, R. McKenna (eds.). Maya Cultural Activism in Guatemala,. Austin: University of Texas Press. pp. 114–30. ISBN 9780292767669.
Journal essays
- Sturm, Circe, ed. (2019). "Rethinking Blackness and indigeneity in the light of settler colonial theory". American Indian Culture and Research Journal. 43 (2). Los Angeles, CA: University of California–Los Angeles. doi:10.17953/aicrj.43.2.sturm.
Articles
- Sturm, Circe (August 2014). "RACE, SOVEREIGNTY, AND CIVIL RIGHTS: Understanding the Cherokee Freedmen Controversy". Cultural Anthropology. 29 (3): 575–98. doi:10.14506/ca29.3.07. Retrieved July 25, 2025.
- Sturm, Circe (September 2022). "I've Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land by Alaina E. Roberts (review)". Native American and Indigenous Studies. 9 (2): 148. doi:10.1353/nai.2022.a863596. OCLC 9893016390. Retrieved July 25, 2025., peer-reviewed
- Sturm, Circe (August 19, 2017). "Reflections on the Anthropology of Sovereignty and Settler Colonialism: Lessons from Native North America". Cultural Anthropology. 32 (3): 340–48. doi:10.14506/ca32.3.03. ISSN 1548-1360., peer-reviewed
- Sturm, Circe; Di Fiore, Anthony (March 16, 2022). "Why is Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick so afraid of US history?". Visible. Retrieved July 25, 2025.
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See also
References
External links
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