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Dr. Elise Boxer is an enrolled citizen of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes. She is Dakota from the Sisseton and Wahpeton bands. Boxer received her Ph.D. in history from Arizona State University.
Dr. Boxer has developed and taught over 15 courses in Native American Studies and History. She has taught a variety of courses in Native Studies from the "Introduction to the Native American Studies Discipline" to "Crime in Indian Country." Boxer is looking forward to bringing her expertise to the University of South Dakota and continue to develop and teach courses in Native Studies.
Dr. Boxer is currently working on her manuscript, To Become White and Delightsome: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and construction of a “Lamanite” Identity. Her manuscript explores the construction of race in the LDS church and the manner in which race and identity has been defined, constructed and maintained. Her primary focus is on Indigenous peoples in the United States and the creation of a religious identity or using Mormon terminology, a “Lamanite” identity. Boxer has a chapter, “This is the Place!” Disrupting Mormon settler colonialism,” that will appear in Decolonizing Mormonism, edited by Joanne Brooks and Gina Colvin that will be published by the University of Utah Press in 2015. She recently had an article, “The Lamanites Shall Blossom as the Rose:” The Indian Student Placement Program, Mormon whiteness and Indigenous identity accepted for a special issue on race for the Journal of Mormon History that will also be published in 2015.
