Timothy B. Powell, Senior Research Scientist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, received his Ph.D. from Brandeis University. His research interests include Native American literature, oral history, and material culture; research and development of digital archives related to Native American and African American culture; and multicultural American literature.

Dr. Powell works with the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians and the Ojibwe in northern Minnesota, creating digital archives based on indigenous systems of knowledge. In the context of the English department, this translates to utilizing digital technology to teach students to "read" not only novels and short stories written by Indians, but stories woven into wampum belts or painted on deer skins. His position at the Penn Museum will afford students access to Native American storytellers and artifacts, which will expand their understanding of "literature" beyond the margins of the white page.

Dr. Powell is the author of Ruthless Democracy: A Multicultural Interpretation of the American Renaissance (Princeton UP, 2000), Beyond the Binary: Reconstructing Cultural Identity in a Multicultural Context (Rutgers UP, 2000), The Singing Bird: A Cherokee Novel by John Milton Oskison (forthcoming from Oklahoma University Press). His most recent articles include: “Native /American Digital Storytelling: Situating the Cherokee Oral Tradition within American Literary History,” American Literature Compass (an on-line journal from Blackwell); “Recovering Pre-Colonial American Literary History: The Seneca ‘Origin of Stories’ and the Maya Popol Vuh” in A Companion to the Colonial Literatures of America (Blackwell, 2005); “Digitizing Cherokee Culture: Building Bridges Between Libraries, Students, and the Reservation,” (MELUS, summer 2005).