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.
How does the growing inequality between and within nations—which is the major global issue of our times—impact the Caribbean region and, in turn, its U.S. neighbor?
This course explores the complex, formative role of the Caribbean in the development of Western colonialism and capitalism and the consequences for the peoples of the region. Four major themes will be examined. First, the importance of the region in the origin and early development of Western imperialism...
This course is a core requirement for all MPP students. No other students are allowed to enroll at this time. The course is in response to longstanding efforts by HKS students, and most recently, the HKS Equity Coalition, to insist that understanding race and racism and their intersecting forms of power and oppression is essential to an excellent education at a policy school. The United States’ global dominance has long been the envy of the world. But the role of race to native born and newcomer alike has often...
How has the ocean made the modern world? This course asks how stories of the Atlantic intersect with larger threads of world history such as empire, enslavement, and Indigenous dispossession. Mindful that the very word oceanography combines the Greek words for ocean and writing, we’ll investigate how biophysical conditions mediate cultural, historical, and even economic experience. How did Atlantic currents, prevailing winds, and fisheries facilitate the development of racial capitalism? And how do we write and...
Childbearing, pregnancy, and motherhood, and the uncanny bond between mother and child have been focalthemes in the history of religion since the Paleolithic period. This seminar considers the complex subject of motherhood through sacred histories from ancient Greece, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Buddhism, Finnish epic, and select indigenous traditions. We will also read contemporary works in matrifocal theology, evolutionary biology, sociology, and literature.
This course will survey constructive religious reflection that is informed by an ecological worldview and accountable to various forms of environmental activism. Readings will be drawn from a variety of religious and spiritual traditions, among them Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Paganism, religious naturalism, and Indigenous spirituality. We will pay special attention to the interplay between ecotheology and various theologies of liberation. Students will be invited to develop their own constructive...
This is a general introduction to and survey of the arts of Ancient America. We will look at both Mesoamerica and the Andean art and architecture beginning with some of the earliest cultures and ending with Aztec, Maya, Muisca and Inca. Questions about the materials, urban planning,meaning and aesthetics will be addressed. The course will also take advantage of the great collections at the Peabody Museum as well as the MFA. There are no prerequisites.
“Latin America” refers to a geographical region, a culture, a form of racialization, a mode of being, and even a concept. How have these different characterizations imagined Latin America and its diaspora, and what kinds of myths and discourses emerged as a result? How have these imaginaries constructed Latin America as a homogeneous, cohesive whole, and to what effect? What do these representations erase, especially considering the heterogeneous cultural and linguistic traditions in the region? Throughout the...
What responsibility do later generations have to remember and atone for the injustices of the past, even as they are perpetuated in the present? This course focuses on how projects of national public memory—especially commissions of “Truth and Reconciliation”—grapple with the demands of the past as they are experienced, ignored, and/or re-narrated by successive generations. Our class discussions will be oriented by readings from the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, which...
In this participatory hybrid course, we explore the creation and implementation of Street Dance Activism as a Co-choreographic somatic[1] healing modality, and form of spiritual transcendence, through participating in the Global Dance Meditation for Black Liberation and deeply engaging with ...
This course will explore how literary and other textual sources can provide the creative stimulus for original vocal and instrumental composition. From popular music to experimental contemporary music, how is it that the integration of words and music can achieve an expressive affect that is greater than the sum of the parts? Likewise, how can the concepts and sounds of a text influence and even determine the creative character of an instrumental composition?
In answering these questions, and by way of establishing...
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...
