Listed in: , as EDST-240 | American Studies, as AMST-240 | Sexuality, Women's and Gender Studies, as SWAG-243
Kiara M. Vigil (Section 01)
(Offered as AMST 240 [Pre-1900], EDST-240 and SWAG 243) From Longfellow’s Hiawatha and D.H. Lawrence’s Studies in Classic American Literature to Disney’s Pocahontas and more recently Moana to James Cameron’s Avatar, representations of the Indigenous as “Other” have greatly shaped cultural production in America as vehicles for defining the nation and the self. This interdisciplinary course introduces students to the broad field of Native American and Indigenous Studies, by engaging a range of texts from law to policy to history and literature as well as music and aesthetics. Film will also provide grounding for our inquiries. By keeping popular culture, representation, and the nature of historical narratives in mind, we will consider the often mutually constitutive relationship between American identity and Indian identity as we pose the following questions: How have imaginings of a national space and national culture by Americans been shaped by a history marked by conquest and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples? And, how have the myths of conquest become a part of education and popular representations to mask settler colonial policies and practices that seek to “erase in order to replace” the Native? This course also considers how categories like race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and religion have defined identities and changed over time with particular regards to specific Native American individuals and tribal nations. Students will be able to design their own final research project. It may focus on either a historically contingent or contemporary issue related to Native American people in the United States that is driven by a researchable question based on working with an Indigenous author’s writings from the Kim-Wait/Pablo Eisenberg (or KWE for short) collection of Native American Literature books in the archives of Amherst College.
Limited to 20 students. Spring semester. Professor Vigil.
How to handle overenrollment: Preference to American Studies majors, then preference to first and second year students with particular interest in Native American Studies, proportional representation across classes.
Students who enroll in this course will likely encounter and be expected to engage in the following intellectual skills, modes of learning, and assessment: collaborative group work, independent research, oral presentations, readings and discussions, visual and aural analysis, interpretation of archival materials.
| ISBN | Title | Publisher | Author(s) | Comment | Book Store | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Indians in Unexpected Places | University Press of Kansas | Deloria, Philip | Amherst Books | TBD | ||
| Domestic Subjects: Gender, Citizenship, and Law in Native American Literature | Yale University Press | Piatote, Beth | Amherst Books | TBD | ||
| Cinematic Comanches: The Lone Ranger in the Media Borderlands | Dustin Tahmahkera | Amherst Books | TBD |
These books are available locally at Amherst Books.