Congratulations to Dr. Haylee Glasel, who defended her dissertation “Ellos Eatnu/Let The River Flow: Sámi Artistic Responses to Contemporary Environmental Violence” under the direction of Dr. Kristin Dowell in the fall of 2025.
Dr. Glasel specializes in global contemporary art with a focus on Indigenous art and media in Sápmi (Norway/ Sweden/ Finland/ Russia). Her research interests include land rights, the environment, materiality, story, memory, and sovereignty.
Her dissertation specifically looks at the disruption of kinship ties between humans and the more-than-human world. In it, she analyzes Sámi environmental and land-based artworks as they develop in reaction to environmental violence through an interdisciplinary lens. Dr. Glasel focuses on duodji, artworks steeped in Sámi epistemology and worldviews, as one of the ways that artists are reconnecting human and more-than-human who have been separated by violence against the land.
Haylee writes:
“Dr. Kristin Dowell has had a tremendous impact on this dissertation project.I am grateful to her for introducing me to Sámi film and for her encouragement to continue learning more about Sámi art. I have learned so much from her mentorship and guidance.”
Dr. Dowell describes the impact of Haylee’s research:
“Haylee’s innovative dissertation is the result of years of her dedication to learning about Sámi culture, art, and environmental activism. Her immersive fieldwork included North Sámi language courses, travel to Norway to visit archives, museums, and Sámi cultural centers, and also visits to Sápmi (Sámi traditional territory) to engage in reindeer herding and experiential learning about Sámi cultural ways of life from Sámi Knowledge Keepers. Her dissertation is anchored within Sámi epistemologies and she makes key interventions that deepen art historical scholarship about the intersections of Sámi art and activism. The Sámi language, the centrality of reindeer to Sámi ways of life, and her engagement with the Sámi aesthetic system of duodji, anchor her rich analysis of Sámi installation art, paintings, large-scale narrative embroidery, and performance art. Her work brings a new lens to Circumpolar Indigenous Art while making critical interventions in the field of Global Contemporary Art with an emphasis on land-based Indigenous art practices. I have been impressed with Haylee’s commitment to her research on Sámi art and activism and it has been an honor to serve as the chair of her dissertation committee.”
Dr. Glasel is a fellow of the Florida State University Native American and Indigenous Studies Center (NAIS). Her research has been supported by the Department of Art History and the Congress of Graduate Students. This has allowed her to travel internationally to Norway, Finland, and Italy. In addition, she also presented papers at the Mediated Arctic Geographies Conference in Finland (2022), Nordic Nature in Norway (2022), and Universities Art Association of Canada (2022). She also published a book chapter earlier this year titled “Reciprocity and Respect: Land Based Artistic Practices in Response to Policies Against the Deatnu River” in Landscape and Nature in Nordic Art, edited by MaryClaire Pappas and Tonje Haugland Sørensen.
As a doctoral student at FSU, Haylee served as instructor of record for ARH 2050 History and Criticism of Art I and ARH 2051 History and Criticism of Art II. She also served on the 38th and 39th Graduate Student Symposium committees as the Editor and Assistant Editor of Athanor. She was the department PhD student representative from 2023 to 2025 and a member of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Center (NAIS) Indigenous film screening committee.
