This seminar is an advanced introduction to the history and study of religious expression in the cultural area known as Mesoamerica from prehispanic times to the present. Utilizing a diverse array of primary and secondary materials with special use of pictorial and alphabetic codices, we will examine the themes of cosmovision, miracles, human body, gender, death, and the soul in Mesoamerican cultures. The course will focus on the development of beliefs, practices, and religious structures (in Mexica, Maya, and other cultures) such...
Approaching 20th-century abstract art through the lens of religious studies, this course explores alternatives to twentieth-century narratives of modern art centered on the existential crisis of a heroic-- usually male, Caucasian and secular—individual. In contrast, we will center paths to abstraction in which a departure from or repurposing of the figure emanates from spiritual sources not usually associated with modernity. Locating the artists’ work within their biographies and their communities, the course focuses on...
This community based research course focuses on some of the major issues Native American Indian tribes and nations face in the 21st century. It provides in-depth, hands-on exposure to native development issues, including: sovereignty, economic development, constitutional reform, leadership, health and social welfare, tribal finances, land and water rights, culture and language, religious freedom, and education. In particular, the course emphasizes problem definition, client relationships, and designing and completing a research project for... Read more about EMR 121/DEV 502/EDU A102: Native Americans in the 21st Century: Nation Building II
This reading group will cover a variety of current and enduring questions involving fundamental issues of freedom, equality, property, and democracy. We will focus on legal issues involving race, sex, sexual orientation, religious liberty, tribal sovereignty, the American rejection of titles of nobility, and inequality in access to income and wealth. Issues addressed include conflict of laws about...
In ways both charged and complex, Native Americans and African Americans together contributed the ground/work of the U.S. nation and the European colonies that preceded it. This course traces intertwined historical lines among Indigenous peoples and African-descended people within the borders of the present-day United States. We will discuss multiple regions, tribal nations, Black communities, and “mixed-race” families across the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries as well as contemporary...
This community based research course focuses on some of the major issues Native American Indian tribes and nations face in the 21st century. It provides in-depth, hands-on exposure to native development issues, including: sovereignty, economic development, constitutional reform, leadership, health and social welfare, tribal finances, land and water rights, culture and language, religious freedom, and education. In particular, the course emphasizes problem definition, client relationships, and designing and...
American Indian, First Nations, and other Indigenous communities of the USA and Canada contend with disproportionately high rates of “psychiatric” distress. Many of these communities attribute this distress to their long colonial encounters with European settlers. Concurrently, throughout the 20th century, the disciplines and professions associated with mind, brain, and behavior (e.g., psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis) consolidated their authority and influence within mainstream society....
Professors: Daniel D'Oca, Philip Deloria, Eric Henson
T - 9:00am to 11:45am
This course will explore three critical dimensions in American Indian land issues: 1) historical land loss, 2) contemporary tribal governmental efforts at land reclamation, stewardship, and co-management, and 3) indigenous futurism. We will begin by tracking the history of land dispossession from colonial settlement to the present day. We will then move on to explore the reality of contemporary tribal governance and how that critical function turns on jurisdiction over traditional...
While some first peoples prefer culturally specific identities over the general term “indigenous,” others embrace indigeneity as an opportunity to establish global connections, explore overlapping colonialisms, assert political identities, or seek redress through international institutions. This seminar investigates the challenges and opportunities to be found in indigenous history. Drawing from the Americas, the Pacific, the Arctic, Asia and elsewhere, we will consider settler colonialism,...
American Studies is an interdisciplinary effort to understand the complicated social and cultural lives of people in—and in relation to—the United States, both past and present. The intersections of History and Literature shape much of American Studies, but the field has also been marked by forays into music, arts, ethnic studies, economics, anthropology, journalism, and even forestry and climate science. This course will introduce students to the history and methods of the field, exploring evocative cases with a...
What is Religion? Why does it show up everywhere? Using archaeology, religious studies and social thought, this course will study the major themes in the history of religions including 'encountering the holy', sports' and ritual', 'crossing borders', 'sacrifice as creation', 'pilgrimage and sacred place', 'suffering and quest for wisdom', 'music and social change', 'violence and cosmic law'. Readings from Native American, African American, Latinx/+, Jewish, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu traditions. Focus...
What is a democratic republic, and can such a regime — one that trusts citizens to capably choose and monitor those in power, and one that trusts those in power to restrain themselves and each other while attending to the public good — survive and protect us from tyranny?
“A republic, if you can keep it.” So did Benjamin Franklin characterize his hopes for American government. What did Franklin and others mean by republic, and why did he and so many others worry that it might...
Examines the challenges and strategies of advocacy, sovereignty building and institutional development among Native Nations in the U.S. Includes engaged scholarship working with Native Nations on these issues.
1995 Toni Morrison and Gabriel García Márquez met for the first time in Mexico City and spoke about their writings, editors, lives and literary influences. This course is a comparative study of the religious dimensions in their writings and lives with special attention to the themes of colonialism and liberation, homeland and quests, rememory and myths, Africa and Latin America, goodness and evil, slavery and freedom. More attention will be given to Morrison’s works and García...
How does Mexico's rich cultural past shape contemporary Mexico and the US in the face of today's pandemics, protests and other challenges of the borderlands?
This course provides students with the opportunity to explore how the study of pre-Hispanic and Colonial Mexican and Latina/o cultures provide vital context for understanding today's changing world. The emphasis is on the mythical and social origins, glory days and political collapse of the Aztec...
Whales, wolves, great apes, big cats, buffalo, bears-- these animals populate human cultural imaginations. From animal advocacy groups to zoos to movies, so-called "charismatic megafauna" and/or “flagship species” dominate a wide swath of debates. By focusing on a selection of animals, this course explores a) how people interpret these animals, and b) how human interactions impact these animals and their natural environments. Organized around different animals and the controversies, questions, and events...
Throughout history, social justice movements and social justice organizations have utilized disciplined inquiry or research to highlight untold stories, illuminate goodness, expose power and colonialism, and offer pathways to more equity and freedom. Yet, we often do not provide educators or doctoral students with research methodology training oriented to these aims. More specifically, we often do not provide educators in the field or doctoral students with research methodology training beyond those...
The purpose of this course is to question prevailing, relatively uniform and quite limiting forms of education in light of approaches that escape or overcome these forms. A mode of education is more than mere content and pedagogy. It refers to ways of knowing, forms of life, conceptions of power, value systems, and structuring goals that ultimately underlie a people’s understanding of what education is and does. Therefore, this course concerns more than a simple familiarity with alternative models of learning—rather,...
This field-based research course focuses on some of the major issues that Native American Indian tribes and nations face as the 21st century begins. It provides in-depth, hands-on exposure to native development issues, including: sovereignty, economic development, constitutional reform, leadership, health and social welfare, land and water rights, culture and language, religious freedom, and education. In particular, the course emphasizes problem definition, client relationships, and designing and completing a research project. The course...
Ju Yon Kim Tuesday and Thursdays, 1:30 PM - 02:45 PM
From depictions of exchanges in the early colonial Americas to efforts to envision alternate and imminent futures, this class will examine representations of interracial encounters in U.S. American culture. We will explore how various texts and performances have conceived, embodied, and reimagined the relationships not only among differently racialized groups, but also between race and nation, individual and community, and art and politics. Topics addressed in this course will include narratives of indigeneity,...
Zachary Nowak Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:00am-10:15am
What’s the problem with wilderness? Or the environmental movement? Or invasive species? This course examines how humans thought about and used the natural world over the centuries—and the consequences of both use of and thoughts about the nature. Students will learn about food, climate change, pollution, conquest and resistance, environmentalism, and energy. This course actively seeks to show the importance of the material world and the contributions of a broad spectrum of historical actors to US...
Water is life, but is it a human right? Water governance is a contentious issue globally because humans rely on water for nearly every productive activity; moreover, it is often scarce and not distributed equally. To better understand the persistence and escalation of struggles over water access around the world, this course uses a multidisciplinary approach that allows students to examine both the social and physical shape of water in a modern and historical context. While all bodies of water deserve mention,...
This hands-on course will introduce key episodes and issues in the history of American astronomy by close looking at rare early scientific instruments and tangible objects in Harvard collections. Starting with the story of Captain John Smith, Pocahontas, and a sundial, the course will move from colonial relations with Native Americans to the controversial placement of observatories on sacred mountaintops today. In between, we will discuss the roles of religion, politics, science, and culture in the...
Initiated by a Muskogee student, this course will be advised by Prof. Ann Braude (Harvard Divinity) and Marcus Briggs-Cloud, HDS 2010. Any student interested in indigenous history and culture of the Southeastern US is welcome. Meeting time to be arranged. Permission of the Instructor required. For further information contact ann_braude@harvard.edu.
Eleanor Craig Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10:30am-11:45am
How might critical attention to race and ethnicity as they intersect with gender and sexuality—and also frameworks of indigeneity and class—shape how we study? How do these lenses shift the questions we ask, the information that counts as data, and the genres of work that we recognize as 'academic'?For those newer to studies of race and ethnicity, this course provides intersectional frameworks for recognizing what assumptions undergird academic projects and fields of study. For...
This course explores ways in which human collectives have conceived of other animals, whether in analogical relations for scientific research, exploitative relations for food and labor, affective relations like fear, disgust, love. What are some histories of these unique interdependencies between human animals and nonhuman animals? We will critically explore the relentless and yet slippery divisions between humans and nonhuman animals, seeing them as a falsely singular, conflictual and segregatory divide that has played...
This course introduces the archaeological study of the ancient societies of eastern North America, with a focus on the Ohio River Valley region, the first frontier of the United States. We will explore inter-related aspects of religion, economy, technology, and human biology associated with the span of time ranging from the first arrival of humans to the European invasion of the continent. The emphasis is on key forms and changes in social organization associated with shifts between foraging and farming, the...
