Talks & Events
Featured Talks
"Indigenous Literary Formations"
Keywords for Socionarratology — Humboldt University, Berlin — June 6, 2026
Sarah Rivett presented as part of Panel 4: Imaginaries at this international conference on the Socionarratology Project, a Princeton-Humboldt Strategic Partnership research initiative exploring the intersection of literary studies and the social sciences.
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Early-Americanist Colloquium
Columbia University — April 9, 2026
Professor Sarah Rivett presented a talk at the Early-Americanist Colloquium at Columbia University, where she shared insights from her current research on Edgar Allan Poe. The colloquium brings together scholars and students interested in early American literature and history for conversations about new and ongoing research in the field.
Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention – Roundtable Session
Toronto, Canada — January 9, 2026
Sarah Rivett participated in a roundtable session at the Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention in Toronto. The session featured a series of short remarks from invited speakers followed by an open discussion, creating a space for collaborative reflection on ongoing research and ideas in early American studies.
"What is Socionarratology?"
Deutsches Haus at NYU — September 30, 2025
Join Deutsches Haus at NYU and the German Center for Research and Innovation (DWIH) New York in a presentation of “What is Socionarratology?” with Philipp Felsch (Humboldt University), Florian Fuchs (Princeton University), Marc Ortmann (Humboldt University), and Sarah Rivett (Princeton University). Sarah presented “Story as Survival,” a talk comparing two U.S. American authors often associated with points of literary origin: Washington Irving, an inaugural voice of United States national literature, and Leslie Marmom Silko, a foundational author of its counter-narrative in the Native American literary renaissance.
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Book Launch: Ralph Bauer & Alex Mazzaferro, "American Literature: The Epistemological Turn in Early American Literary Studies"
University of Maryland — September 18, 2025
Join Professors Ralph Bauer and Alex Mazzaferro (UCLA), as they discuss their special issue of American Literature: The Epistemological Turn in Early American Literary Studies. Sarah Rivett will be in attendance to share insights from her article, “The Raven and the Sea: The Lost Intertidal World of Eighteenth-Century Ornithology.”
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The Raven and the Sea
Princeton University, High Meadows Environmental Institute — December 3, 2024
Sarah Rivett presented “The Raven and the Sea” and was the final speaker in the fall 2024 HMEI Faculty Seminar Series at Princeton University.
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Photos by Sarah Malone
Beyond Place and Time: Reading
Raven Stories
Princeton University, September 2024
Sarah Rivett explores Tlingit art held at Princeton since the 19th century and its connection to the Tlingit Raven Cycle, an oral literature approximately 2,000 years old, in connection with the Arts Council of Princeton artist residency of National Heritage Fellow Nathan Jackson.
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Photos by Sarah Malone
2023/2024 Old Dominion Public Lecture Series — Story as Survival
Princeton University Humanities Council — March 21, 2024
Sarah Rivett examines how the concept of story as survival — central to Native American literature — challenges the American origin story that has long marginalized Indigenous narratives. Drawing on Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony and the Tlingit Raven Cycle, she contrasts the Anglo-American raven as emblem of death with the Tlingit raven as life-giving storyteller and source of a future-oriented creation story.
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17th Annual Humanities Colloquium: Archives and the Future
Princeton University Humanities Council — September 21, 2023
Sarah Rivett participated in this wide-ranging panel discussion on the theme of "Archives and the Future," presenting "The Raven's Flight through Colonial Archives." The colloquium explored questions of archival temporality, archival silences, and the methodologies that shape humanities research. Fellow speakers included Sandra Bermann, Laura F. Edwards, and Kinohi Nishikawa, with the conversation moderated by Council Chair Esther Schor. Held at the Chancellor Green Rotunda.
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The Limits of Natural History: From Melville to the Tlingit Raven, Yéil
Nanyang Technological University, School of Humanities — March 15, 2023
Sarah Rivett delivered this English Seminar lecture placing Western natural historical writings about the raven alongside the Tlingit Raven Cycle from Southeast Alaska. Focusing on stories about Raven and the Whale (Yéil ka Yáay), the talk reveals how the Tlingit story cycle presents the raven as a being that moves seamlessly between land and sea — trickster and creator as well as destroyer — recentering human relationships to the natural world in ways that challenge Western ornithological and theological traditions.
Tlingit Art, Spirit, and Ancestry: Healing Histories of Dispossession
Princeton University Art Museum — February 10, 2023
In the late 19th century, Presbyterian missionaries brought hundreds of Tlingit belongings from southeastern Alaska to the Princeton Theological Seminary, where they remain in Princeton University's collections today. This symposium brought together Tlingit scholars and artists to address where this art belongs and how knowledge might be restored to those from whom the items were taken. Panelists included Ernestine Saankaláxt Hayes, Judith Daxootsú Ramos, Guná Megan Jensen, Wayne Price, Carin Silkaitis, and Liz Zacher. Co-sponsored by the Humanities Council, NAISIP, the Fund for Canadian Studies, the Effron Center for the Study of America, and the Princeton University Art Museum.
From Common Land to Raven’s Land: Unsettling the American Origins
Princeton University Public Lectures — April 20, 2022
Sarah Rivett explores the contested histories of land, Indigenous sovereignty, and American origins in this 11-minute public lecture.
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Sea-Ravens and the Terrestrial Limits of Natural History
University of Minnesota, Center for Premodern Studies — November 11, 2022
Sarah Rivett delivered this lecture exploring the deep connection between ravens and cormorants in Western theological and natural history traditions and how the Tlingit Raven Cycle from Southeast Alaska offers a profoundly different understanding. Where Western ornithology confined the raven to a terrestrial, unregenerate role, Tlingit stories reveal the raven as a being that moves seamlessly between land and sea, recentering human relationships to the natural world. Co-sponsored by the Department of English and the Religion, Theology & Enlightenment Workshop.
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Artist Conversation: Lance Twitchell and Nicholas Galanin
Princeton University Art Museum — April 7, 2022
Sarah Rivett moderated this virtual conversation between Tlingit/Unangax̂ multidisciplinary artist Nicholas Galanin and Lance (X'unei) A. Twitchell, professor of Alaska Native Languages at the University of Alaska Southeast, exploring land, language, and culture in Tlingit artistic traditions past and present, in connection with the Princeton University Art Museum's collections of nineteenth-century Northwest Coast Native art and contemporary Tlingit art. Co-sponsored by the NAISIP Working Group Seminar Series and the Humanities Council.
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Beginning American Literary History Again
Columbia University — February 10, 2022
Drawing on Tlingit Raven literature, Sarah Rivett examines how Euro-Americans used biblical typology to construct a myth of national origins rooted in American exceptionalism, and how the raven, understood in Tlingit tradition as trickster and cultural hero, fundamentally disrupts that myth. The raven exposes the repressed trauma and violence of colonization, slavery, and genocide at the nation's core, occupying an unsettling space in American letters beyond the reach of Protestant epistemology and theological control.
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Retelling American Literature through Raven’s Song
Sealaska Heritage — November 22, 2021
Sarah Rivett challenges European interpretations of the raven, long cast as a symbol of disobedience and evil in the Western tradition, through a case study of a Tlingit box from 1880s Yakutat, Alaska, now housed in the Princeton University Art Museum. Drawing on the oral Raven literature of Kuchéin Frank Italio, the oldest recorded Tlingit storyteller, Rivett explores how Tlingit Raven stories illuminate what has been suppressed in the Genesis narrative and reveal the mythological foundations upon which US settler colonialism depends.
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Munsee Language Symposium
Princeton University — November 4th & 5th, 2021
This two-day inaugural symposium, presented by the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative at Princeton, brought Princeton faculty and students into direct dialogue with members of the Munsee-Delaware Nation to learn about Munsee language, history, and culture. The event examined how Indigenous language revitalization counters the violent legacy of settler colonial regimes, including boarding schools where Native children were forced to speak English exclusively. Co-sponsored by American Studies and Canadian Studies.
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Enhancing Support for Indigenous Studies Research
Princeton University, October 29, 2021
Sarah Rivett joined Robbie Richardson (Assistant Professor of English) and PhD candidate Izzy Lockhart for a panel discussion facilitated by PhD candidate Lisa Kraege, exploring what library staff should know about Indigenous Studies research. The event was presented by the Princeton University Library Indigenous Studies Working Group.
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Calling the End from the Beginning: Retelling American Typology through Raven’s Song
Nanyang Technological University — March 11, 2021
Sarah Rivett delivered this talk at Nanyang Technological University, exploring Indigenous Raven stories and their relationship to American typology and literary origins.
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Before “The Raven”: The Story of the Forgotten American Type
Harvard University — September 30, 2020
Sarah Rivett presented at the Mahindra Humanities Center's Eighteenth-Century Studies Seminar, comparing the raven in the Book of Genesis to Indigenous Raven stories from the Pacific Northwest Coast, Interior Alaska, and the Bering Sea, and examining what these traditions reveal about the contested origins of American literature.
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