The study of North America, at its root, is the study of Native America and African America. Typically, scholarship on the first Americans and Africans and their descendants are studied in isolation. Dominant trends in scholarship, journals, academic disciplines, and university departments tend to reinforce these boundaries. And yet, from the dawn of European colonization to the present day, the worlds of Black and Indigenous peoples have collided in ways that have shaped not only the history of each group, but also, European... Read more about EMR 158: Land, Labor, and the Color Line: New Perspectives on Black and Indigenous Histories
Professor: Christopher Pexa TH - 9:45am to 11:45am
This course will examine contemporary writings by Native American and Indigenous authors across the genres of sci fi, horror, and fantasy, with the aim of thinking about Native American and Indigenous futures (and futurisms) more broadly, and also in ways that may exceed genre altogether. In other words, our investigation will be organized according to conventional sci fi genres of slipstream, alien contact, and apocalypse, but also to non-genre expressions of Indigenous futurity. By juxtaposing literary works from authors writing... Read more about ENGLISH 90FF: Indigenous Sci Fi, Horror, Fantasy, and Futurisms
What are Native American and Indigenous literatures, and how might we best understand their/our relationship to U.S. and Canadian national literatures? How may we read Native American and Indigenous literatures as asserting both critiques of the United States, Canada, and other settler colonial nations, as well as asserting longstanding forms of Indigenous peoplehood, nationhood, and sovereignty? This seminar attempts to answer such questions by examining Native American and Indigenous writers’ imaginings of resistance, survival... Read more about FYSEMR 65O: Reading Native Nations
Professor: Joseph Singer M, T - 10:15am to 12:15pm
Prerequisites: Open to upper-level JD students. For LLM students: this upper-level course assumes that students have prior knowledge of the basic principles of American law of contracts, torts, property, and procedure (including personal jurisdiction law), as well as knowledge of common law reasoning and argument. LLM students may take this course only if they concurrently take a course at Harvard Law School in contracts, torts, or property law in the fall semester of 2023.
How do supreme courts decide hard cases? How do they justify the results they reach by persuasive opinions? How do judges on multimember courts attempt to persuade other judges and to reach agreement when cases are hard? How can you write an opinion that not only justifies the result with acceptable reasons but attempts to persuade judges on the other side and to speak to the losing party to explain why they lost? This seminar will enable you to act as a supreme court justice, sit in conference, discuss cases, and write opinions (... Read more about HLS 2505: Supreme Court Decision Making
Professor(s): Matt Liebmann and Amy Clark TH - 12:00pm to 2:45pm
The class covers archaeological method and theory emphasizing the 1950s onwards. Large-scale trends in social theory will be balanced with attention to the ideas and writings of significant anthropologists and archaeologists.
Professor: Davíd Carrasco M, W - 10:30am to 11:45am
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 Empire and Maya civilizations as a pivot to the study of the...
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
Australian experience provides a lens from which to cast a wide historical view of the development of settler societies over two centuries, drawing comparisons with Canada, Argentina, Uruguay, South Africa and New Zealand. Despite their common focus on natural resources production and close engagement with the international economy, the experience of these economies often differed. Themes include: geography versus institutions as development determinants; colonialism’s impact on indigenous economy; and the...
The course uses interdisciplinary, critical, and transnational/global perspectives to study racism and other systems of oppression, poverty, and the disempowerment of peoples subordinated based on race, gender, and class. The sessions include readings regarding the experiences of Black Americans, Burakumin people, Dalit people, Jewish people, Romani people, Palestinians, and other oppressed and racialized peoples. This is an introductory course examining four main topics to be discussed in...
The seminars will be based around some themes and questions in the discussion of music in Australia and beyond, with an emphasis on my personal experience and output as a composer and on the work of other musicians and composers.
Topics to be covered may include: • landscape, seascape, open space and ‘country’; • tradition, innovation and influence in indigenous music; • ‘irreconcilable synchronicities’ - cross-cultural music encounters; • “Did you use the didj?’ - artistic debates about...
The world is on fire. Smoke darkens the sky. Scorching heat. Violent storms. Mass extinction.
In this perilous moment in human history, the world desperately needs leaders with the courage, drive and hardball political skills to fight climate change and help restore the natural world. Environmental leaders must also recognize how marginalized communities suffer disproportionately from pollution and climate change. Leadership is difficult in any enterprise, but it is especially...
Can international law be a tool for promoting global justice? In this class, we will explore diverse issues such as why the laws of war didn’t constrain the Russian invasion of the Ukraine and whether international criminal accountability for mass atrocity can deter human rights violations and satisfy victims? How could reparations for slavery be delivered? Can environmental law help reduce climate change and provide justice for climate refugees? Can trade law contribute to a fairer and...
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...
