EXPERT PROFILE

Travis Franks

English Department
Assistant Professor (he/him/his)

Field: English, Society
Areas of Focus: American Southwest, American West History

Expertise

  • Native American Literature
  • American Literature
  • American West
  • Australia
  • Settler Colonialism
  • Westerns
  • Country Music
  • Baseball

Bio

Travis Franks received his PhD in contemporary multiethnic literatures from Arizona State University. His book project, Settler Nativism: Colonial Origins of Anti-Immigrant Sentiment, is an analysis of literatures of the US, Australia, and other settler nations in which Franks argues that the current wave of nativism in these countries must be understood in relation to the original and ongoing dispossession of Indigenous peoples. His work appears in Ariel, MELUS, American Indian Quarterly, Western American Literature, and elsewhere. He has completed McNair and Fulbright fellowships, served as the non-fiction editor of RED INK: An International Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art, & Humanities, and curated digital humanities exhibitions for AustLit, the premier online database for the study of Australian literature. He belongs to the Kinship & Reciprocity Collective and is a founding member of the revolving ensemble band known as New Heroes of the Old War.