Katherine Rennebohm Fall 2019, Wednesday, 3-5:45pm
Can film change the world? What can the history of engaged film and media-making teach us about politics, and vice-versa? This course will study instances of political filmmaking from around the world: early 20th century avant-garde filmmaking, anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist cinemas, feminist and queer filmmaking, Indigenous cinemas, and more. Students will learn about different political movements, international histories of film theory and film form, and the ongoing legacies of cinemas of...
An interdisciplinary graduate research seminar exploring cutting-edge approaches in ethnic studies. From its institutional beginnings in the late-1960s, the field of ethnic studies built frameworks to critically examine questions of inequality and power through intersecting analytical paradigms of race, indigeneity, gender, sexuality, class, and citizenship. With visiting scholars at Harvard’s Warren Center, students will explore how such frameworks remain useful and relevant, interrogate limitations and...
Megan Francis Fall 2019, Mondays and Wednesdays, 1:15-2:30pm
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 been treated often as aberrational, an unfortunate artifact of the nation’s past. This course examines the nature of race at the heart of the American project through the lens of wealth creation, labor markets, political culture, social institutions, immigration and civic life. Although race often attaches to people of color, racial identity and ideology have been...
Christopher Clements Fall 2019, Mondays, 9:45-11:45am
This course will explore various forms of Native American cultural and political production in the twentieth century. Drawing on fiction, film, historical documents, documentaries, photographs, nonfiction, and memoirs, this class will explore the ways in which Indigenous people have articulated both belonging and separateness from the United States. In addition to its focus on key aspects of modern indigenous culture and politics—sovereignty, self-determination, decolonization, anti-racism, gender...
Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology is home to 25 oil portraits of indigenous American leaders painted in the first half of the 19th century. Originally commissioned to preserve cultures an American bureaucrat feared would be extinct, these paintings transcend a moribund history. In fact, the Native American nations represented are still here. Moreover, these portraits have much to teach us about diplomacy, power, representation and indigeneity in 2019. The Peabody portraits, painted by the...
Anne Braude Fall 2019, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10:30-11:45am
Based around a series of traditionalist guest speakers, this course interrogates the study of religion in general and of Native American traditions in particular in light of indigenous religious experiences, perspectives and histories. Questions of appropriation, repatriation and religious freedom will be approached through legal as well as cultural frameworks.
This seminar will explore intersections in African American and Native American histories with an emphasis on pivotal moments in the shaping of a modern identity referred to as “Black Indian.” Students in this seminar will explore and analyze historical contexts and contingencies leading to thick interactions between people of African descent and indigenous Americans as well as experiential testimony by individuals asserting mixed race and/or bi-cultural Afro-Native identities. During our time together, students will...
Matt Liebmann Fall 2019, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12:00-1:15pm
In 1492 Native Americans discovered Europeans, changing the world forever. The European invasion of the Americas triggered demographic, economic, and ecological changes on an unprecedented scale. The subsequent movement of plants, animals, and goods prompted global shifts in population, exploitation of resources, and the transformation of environments on both sides of the Atlantic. What can archaeology tell us about early encounters between Native Americans and Europeans? Why did the European...
Arianne Sedef Urus Fall 2019, Wednesdays, 9:45 – 11:45am
This course examines how the right to natural resources became contested in North America following European conquest and westward expansion, with a particular emphasis on the period before 1865. Sometimes these contested resources have been clean air, soil, and water, while at other times they included fisheries, forests, agricultural fields, animal pastures, or oil. From when pilgrims first arrived at Plymouth Rock in 1620, race, class, and gender have been the determining factors in regulating...
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. These “psy-...
