Biography

Research and teaching interests:

Indigenous literatures and expressive cultures of North America, Queer and Trans* Indigenous Studies; Decolonial aesthetics and theory; More-than-human worlds; genre and speculation; comparative studies of race and empire

About:

Dr. Ho’esta Mo’e’hahne (they/she) is a Southern Tsistsistas and Hinono’ei person from the southern prairies of North America who lives and learns on the Tongva homelands and waters of Tovaangar. Ho’esta is an assistant professor of English at UCLA, where she serves on the faculty advisory committees for the American Indian Studies Center and the LGBTQ Studies Program. Ho’esta’s teaching and writing consider gender, sexuality, ecology, and wonder in Indigenous literatures and expressive cultures. Ho’esta is currently completing a book that traces how contemporary Indigiqueer and trans* aesthetics map decolonial erotics and more-than-human relations in cities across Canada and the United States. In 2025, Ho’esta was awarded a public humanities grant by Transgender Educational Network: Theory in Action for Creativity, Liberation, Empowerment, and Service (TEN:TACLES) Initiative for the symposium “Indigiqueer, Trans*, and Two-Spirit Relations and Worldmaking.”

Education

• PhD, University of Southern California, 2017
• MA, University of Southern California, 2013
• BA, University of Oklahoma, 2009

Publications

“‘In-Between Kumeyaay and Brooklyn’: Mapping Queer Indigenous Memory, Affect, and Futurity in Tommy Pico’s IRL.” In The Routledge Companion to Gender and the American West, edited by Susan Bernardin, Routledge, 2022.

“Radical Refusal and the Potential of Queer Indigenous Futures.” Amerikastudien / American Studies. 66.1 (2021): 253-57.

“Sampling the Land and the Trappings of Empire: Jaden Smith’s Moving-Image Settler Aesthetic.” Social Text Online, June 2018.

“Animating the Indigenous and ‘Going Native’ in the City: Kent Mackenzie’s The Exiles.” Western American Literature. 52.1 (Spring 2017): 75-94.

Select Reviews:

Review of Settler Ecologies: The Enduring Nature of Settler Colonialism in Kenya, by Charis Enns and Brock Bersaglio, 2024, University of Toronto Press. Conservation and Society AOP: 1-2, 2024.