American Indian Studies
UNC Chapel Hill
This seminar will provide a survey of Native North American art beginning in the late 1800s to the present. In addition to readings, lectures, slides, and discussions, students wil be asked to produce art studio projects. Each studio assignment will relate to trends found in the Indian art world.
This interdisciplinary course addresses the cultures, histories, arts, and literature of North American Indians. Lectures focus on general themes, and small discussion sections explore how these themes apply to a particular tribe.
9:30 TR 207 Alumni Valerie Lambert
A broad survey of contemporary American Indian societies and cultures. Film, autobiography, literature, current issues, archaeological evidence and history help expose the multiple perspectives that characterize American Indian life today. A&S Non-Western/Comparative perspective, Social Sciences perspective, Cultural Diversity requirement.
9 MWF 204 Murphey Tol Foster
This survey course will set out the context of Native American cultural and historical life through the exploration of literature in a variety of genres. Native critical terms and concepts, as well as major historical moments in Native history, will be elucidated through oral literature, non-fiction, poetry, short stories, film, and novels, primarily drawn from the twentieth century, and from tribal groups of the continental United States. Although minor texts and authors will be included, major writers and texts will include Charles Eastman (Indian Boyhood), Leslie Marmon Silko (Storyteller), Pretty Shield (Pretty Shield), James Welch (Fools Crow), Thomas King (Green Grass, Running Water), and Sherman Alexie’s film The Business of Fancy Dancing.
Continuing Students: (GC) Literature (A&S) Western History & Aesthetic New Students: Approaches (LA) Literary Arts Connections (NA) North Atlantic World . (See your academic advisor for more information)
The history of American Indian cultures from 10,000 B.C. to the time of the European invasion as reconstructed by archaeological research. Special emphasis on the eastern woodlands and the Southwest. Arts and Sciences non-Western/comparative perspective.
AMST 390: Major Native American Novelists
1 MWF 204 Murphey Tol Foster
Through the major canonical Native American novelists of the twentieth century, this course will explore the contestation of knowledge and identity between Native and non-Native people on this continent. Writers and novels to be considered will be John Joseph Mathews (Sundown), N. Scott Momaday (The Names), Leslie Marmon Silko (Gardens in the Dunes), Louise Erdrich (The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse), Sherman Alexie (The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven), and Thomas King (Green Grass, Running Water).
Continuing Students (GC) Other Western History (A&S) Western History New Students: Approaches (HS) Historical Analysis Connections (NA) North Atlantic World
Section 2: 8 TR 302 Greenlaw Maria DeGuzman
Southwest as Contact Zone: The Southwest: Southern California, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, perhaps Louisiana to the extent that half of it lies west of the proverbial "frontier" dividing line of the Mississippi River, and the interior provinces of New Spain and later the northern provinces of Mexico which prior to the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo extended into present-day Utah. The US Southwest/Northern Mexico borderzone was "home" to and "contact zone" of the following Native American nations, among others: the Natchez, the Comanche, the Apache, the Pueblo, the Navajo, the Hopi, the Mohave, the Papago, the Tarahumara, the Chumash, the Cochimi, etc. Additionally, the Southwest (as both the US and northern Mexico) is populated by millions of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans many of whom, particularly as politicized Chicanas/os, claim Aztec "heritage" both as a genealogical and a cultural concept. The Aztecs were concentrated in the central Valley of Mexico (quite far south of the US/Mexico borderlands). However, their imperial dominion extended up into the northern deserts of Mexico now the southwestern United States. Although it is the Aztec civilization that has been emphasized in much Chicana/o literature claiming indigenous "heritage," other native cultures are claimed as well, among them, many of those cited above. Hence, for example, a recent academic conference "All Women of Red Nations: Weaving Connections" includes writers who identify as "Chicana" as well as artists and scholars whose primary identifications are as "Native American" and yet have Spanish names. Reading a diverse set of works by writers of the Southwest we will explore connections between what have often been treated as distinct literatures--Chicana/o and Native American. These connections may be made by the writers themselves in their invocation of shared space, motifs, and kinship. Commonality may also take the form of shared struggle for socio-economic justice and representation (both specifically legal and more broadly cultural) against the ways in which "red" and "brown" people are managed by the US government, stereotyped, and compelled to cohabit in regions of increasingly scarce resources as a result of legacies of occupation. Sometimes connections appear as their seeming opposite, deliberate rejection and boundary-drawing and we will inquire into the causes and effects of these kinds of territorialities. Writers include, but are not limited to Paula Gunn Allen, Leslie Marmon Silko, Joy Harjo, Ines Talamantez, Kathleen Alcala, Rudolfo Acuña, Gloria Anzaldúa, Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Alfredo Vea, and Graciela Limón. Course format is mini-lectures/much discussion. Assignments involve 4 1-2-page written responses to the readings, an oral presentation & active class participation, and two essays (one 8 pages and the second 10-12 pages). Assignments and grade distribution: 1. 4 1-2-page responses on different works that we read), 25% 2. Class participation and one 20-minute presentation (on the course readings), 15% 3. One short essay, 8 pages, 25% 4. A second longer seminar essay, approx. 10-12 pages, 35%.