Contact Information
1205 W Nevada Street
Urbana, IL 61801
Office Hours
Biography
Emerson Parker Pehl (Cherokee Nation) is a PhD candidate through the Department of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Their current cultural studies scholarship primarily focuses on Indigenous and Indigiqueer critiques of U.S. settler coloniality/colonialism and its logics.
Emerson is also a clinical sexologist and a licensed social worker (LSW) in Illinois.
Research Interests
(queer) Indigenous theory & studies, settler colonialism studies, anticoloniality, gender and queer theory, transgender studies, human sexuality studies, (historical) trauma studies
Education
M.S.W. with Trauma Treatment Specialization, Widener University
M.Ed. in Human Sexuality Studies with Clinical Sex Therapy Specialization, Widener University
M.A. in Gender/Cultural Studies, Simmons College
B.A. in Gender Studies and Psychology, Mount Holyoke College
Awards and Honors
2025-2026 HRI Campus Graduate Fellowship
2022-2023 HRI Interseminars Graduate Fellowship
Listed in Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students (FA24, FA23, SP22, & FA21), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Courses Taught
As Instructor of Record:
GWS 202: Sexualities (SP25)
AIS 101: Introduction to American Indian Studies (FA24)
RHET 105: Writing and Research (FA21, SP22)
As Graduate Teaching Assistant:
GWS 275: The Politics of Fashion (SP24)
AIS 101: Introduction to American Indian Studies (FA23)
Highlighted Publications
Journal Articles
Pehl, Emerson Parker. "On "Deadnaming" the "Vanishing Indian": A Trans* Indigene's Poltergeist's Critique of Transnormativity and Its Settler/Coloniality." Transgender Studies Quarterly 11, no. 1 (2024): 80-96.
Pehl, Emerson Parker. "To Choose Responsibility: (Queer) Indigenous Existentialism in A History of My Brief Body." Transmotion 9, no. 1 & 2 (2024): 245-54.
Pehl, Emerson Parker. “(Trans)Gender Fluidity.” Body Studies Journal no. 2 (2020): 1-8.
Galupo, M. Paz, Lex Pulice-Farrow, and Emerson Parker Pehl. ““There is Nothing to Do About It”: Nonbinary Individuals’ Experience of Gender Dysphoria.” Transgender Health (2020): 101-110.
Pehl, Emerson Parker. “Hierarchies of ‘Treatment’: The Influences of Comorbid Psychiatric Diagnoses on Individuals with Gender Dysphoria.” Gender Forum no. 68 (2018): 25-40.
Book Reviews
Pehl, Emerson Parker. "it was never going to be okay (jaye simpson)." Transmotion 7, no. 2 (2021): 202-206.
Public Writing
Pehl, Emerson Parker. ""Annóóma Began the Story of Places": Land as Text." Kritik, Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory (Oct. 2022).