Native American Literature ((4 Credits))

Catalog description

We will read Native literary theorists who offer concepts such as communal narrative, survivance, gender balance, orality, and cyclical time, in order to understand Native American literature in historical and cultural context. We will consider the ways Native literatures negotiate the historical legacy of power dynamics; for example, colonizing stereotypes, and how Native writers use humor to evoke, play with, and intervene in these stereotypes. Native literatures register tensions between Native and Western cultural qualities and values and we will examine the stakes of these values to address contemporary issues that we face globally. Related courses may be disciplinary rather than interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary; for example: First Peoples of North America (HIS).