Hi, I’m Tijuana.

I am a PhD candidate in American Studies at William & Mary. My emphasis is in Native American and Indigenous Studies, Decolonizing Methodologies, and American Literatures. I have also worked as the Oral History Assistant at the Swem Library on campus for multiple years.

My dissertation, “Tell Me about Your Baby: Grief, Kinship, and Infant Mortality; Or, Missing the Missing,” seeks to understand the experiences of pregnancy/infant loss and the silences that surround this specific kind of loss. This project also explores questions of kinship to the dead- to our lost children- and looks to Indigenous ways of knowing and belonging to understand grief, mourning, and- dare I say- healing.

I received my B.A. in Spanish Language and Literatures with minors in Art History and Anthropology from Christopher Newport University (2011), and my M.A. in English from Old Dominion University (2019). At ODU I served as a tutor in the Writing Center and taught English Composition and American Literature.

Currently, my research interests lean toward story/storytelling as both theory and method, Reproductive Justice, and gender violence against Indigenous women, specifically connecting maternal and infant mortality to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIWG2S).