Northeastern State University

Department of Languages and Literature

Dr. Terri Baker

Biography

Biography

 

                 Terri M. Baker is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, a native Oklahoman, and for eighteen years has been a professor of English at Northeastern State University where she also serves on the Native American Studies Faculty and teaches courses in American Indian Literature.  Professor Baker holds her Ph.D. from Louisiana State University, her M.A. from the University of Utah, and her B.A. in English and Speech Education from Southeastern State College (now Southeastern Oklahoma State University).  She is one of the sponsors on her campus of the Native American Student Association which keeps her on her toes.

                 Professor Baker is a producing scholar, presenting papers at conferences, and has published poems, non-fictional essays, book reviews, and in 1999 enjoyed having two plays which she wrote produced by the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.   Dr. Baker has also recently edited along with colleagues from the English and Languages Department a composition textbook for Fountainhead Press.  In 1999 Professor Baker was awarded a place in the Northeastern State University Circle of Excellence for Service Contributions to NSU.

                 In March 2003, Professor Baker was a delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, and presented a workshop as part of Rural Development Leadership Network Participation, an Non-Governmental Organization.

                 In 2000 Professor Baker produced a video Soul Treaties: Oklahoma’s Native American Literature and has shown the video and discussed it in San Antonio, Texas; Fayetteville, Arkansas; and at Michigan State University in Lansing.

                 Professor Baker served as President of the American Association of University Professors Oklahoma Conference in 1999-2000 and is currently the president of her local chapter.

                 Most of Professor Baker’s work is based on her interest in American Indian culture as it is expressed in visual art and literature. Her professional life is reflected in this interest as is her personal experience.

                 As for her personal life, Professor Baker is married to a man nicknamed “Father Contentment” by one of their friends.  She has one son, and she is the daughter of a father descended from a pioneering Scots-Irish family in southeastern Oklahoma and a mother some of whose ancestors traveled the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma and some of whom sailed from Ireland.  Identity figures in some of her poems.  In other poems Professor Baker’s fascination with learning emerges.  Nature also is the focus of many of the poems, including human nature and humanity’s relationship to the natural world.

                 Living with an awareness of the natural world comes easily for her as she professes on the campus of a regional university in the northeastern corner of Oklahoma in the foothills of the Ozarks and lives along the Illinois River in a rural area known locally as Pukin Holler.  From her deck she can watch deer, and various other four footed creatures with whom the four resident dogs cannot be bothered.  When snow and ice cover the ground in the valley in which Pukin Holler is located she stokes the fire and stays home.  She lives in Oklahoma and knows that the snow will melt within a reasonable time.  Professor Baker does not own an answering machine which annoys some.  She does own a cell phone but most of the time forgets to turn it on.

                 Professor Baker is disabled and has been for most of her life.  Currently she uses a walker and mostly doesn’t think much about disability.  She does think about literature, history, art, theater, dance (you know, the fun stuff) and likes a dry martini from time to time.