Cogut Institute for the Humanities

Lance Brightmire ’27 is an undergraduate concentrating in Anthropology. His thesis, tentatively titled “Unsettling the Heartland(s): Performativity, Narration, and the Politics of Racio-Juridical World-Making in Tulsa, Oklahoma,” is an ethnographic and archival inquiry into the discursive practices of civic actors in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Specifically, it asks how public discourses mobilize ideologies of race and law to navigate questions of land, memory, and power in Tulsa, the largest American city situated entirely on tribal nation land and the site of the 1921 Greenwood Race Massacre. The project focuses on three case studies: an assemblage of colonial monuments in the city’s oldest park, the city’s repatriation of the Creek Council Oak Tree, and a co-jurisdictional policing agreement between the city and the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Brightmire considers how civic actors draw on history to contest and reshape the political landscape of a changing city inflected by deep anxieties over questions of race and law. His broader interests include theories of linguistic performativity, practice, and the semiotics of place. A native of Tulsa, Brightmire’s connection to the city’s civic life began as a campaign staffer for a Tulsa city councilor and as the field organizer for the mayor’s 2024 general election campaign.