Sharity Bassett

Sharity L. Bassett is Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Executive Manager of the Electa Quinney Institute for American Indian Education (EQI) at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. She earned her PhD in global gender studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo and has collaborated with Haudenosaunee communities in New York, Ontario, and Montreal since 2011. Her book, Haudenosaunee Women Lacrosse Players: Making Meaning through Rematriation (Michigan State University Press, 2024), explores rematriation and Indigenous community knowledge.

At EQI, Bassett created and directs the Indigenous Kinship & Responsibility Scholarship, which provides undergraduate research opportunities across disciplines, as well as the Indigenous Felt Knowledge Festival and Artist in Residency program. She is also working with tribal nations to create interactive databases and curriculum using historical records and oral history. Since summer 2025, she has worked with Breann Clark to develop and engage collective storying methodology with EQI/MMSD interns and through a workshop series at Ring Lake Ranch, Wyoming. This project engages methodological innovation by combining: (1) co-laboring across difference using intergenerational stories, (2) fiction as a tool to build empathy across difference, and (3) autofiction to articulate how and why collaboration occurs. This project bring campus and community partners into a year-long process centered on creating connected futures through engagement with difficult stories, fostering empathy, and facilitating productive conversations.

Bassett teaches courses in Women’s and Gender Studies and American Indian Studies, including Indigenous feminisms, Indigequeer theory and praxis, critical disability studies, and feminist research methods.