W&L’s Miranda to Give Inaugural Lecture Miranda’s talk, which is free and open to the public, is titled “’Coyote Learns a New Trick’: Beth Brant and Two-Spirit Literatures.”

By Erica Turman
October 16, 2019

Deborah Miranda, Thomas H. Broadus Jr. Professor of English, will give her inaugural lecture on Nov. 13 at 6 p.m. in Northen Auditorium, in Leyburn Library, on the W&L campus.

Miranda’s talk, which is free and open to the public, is titled “‘Coyote Learns a New Trick’: Beth Brant and Two-Spirit Literatures.”

Miranda will discuss Beth Brant and her writing. Miranda wrote the afterword for Brant’s “A Generous Spirit: Selected Works by Beth Brant.” Brant was one of the first Indigenous women to live and write as an out lesbian, coming of age in the nexus of social changes within American Indian, feminist and LGBTQ activism (both within and outside the academy), along with the flowering of small presses.

Miranda will also provide a brief history of third-gender identities in indigenous writing and discuss her own literary encounters with “Coyote” in Brant’s work.

Miranda’s primary teaching, research and creative writing topics include contemporary American literature by authors on the margins of U.S. culture and the field of Critical California Mission Studies.

There will be books for sale following the lecture, including “A Generous Spirit: Selected Works by Beth Brant” and Miranda’s book “Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir.”