Gerald Vizenor

Teaching career

Beginning teaching at Lake Forest College, Illinois, Vizenor was quickly appointed to set up and run the Native American Studies program at Bemidji State University. Later he was professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis(1978–1985), which he satirized mercilessly in his fictions. During this time he was also a visiting professor at Tianjin University, China. Following four years at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he was Provost of Kresge College, and an endowed chair for one year at the University of Oklahoma, Vizenor took up a professorship at the University of California, Berkeley. He is current professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico.

Awards

• MELUS Lifetime Achievement Award, 2011.
• Distinguished Minnesotan, Bemidji State University, 2005
• Distinguished Achievement Award, Western Literature Association, 2005
• Lifetime Achievement Award, Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas, 2001
• PEN Excellence Award, 1990 and 1996
• Artists Fellowship in Literature, California Arts Council, 1989
• New York Fiction Collective Prize, 1988
• American Book Award, 1988
• Film-in-the-Cities Award, Sundance Festival, 1983

Source: Wikipedia