EMR 1030: Topics in Native American and Indigenous Studies: Native North America

Semester: Fall

Offered: 2024

Professor: Mandy Izadi
W - 3:00pm to 5:45pm

The first Americans met Europeans on their shores over five hundred years ago. They made the continent theirs millennia prior. And yet, Indigenous Americans are often missing, or misrepresented—in traditional, even contemporary portraits of North America. An introduction to the study of Native North America—and Native American and Indigenous Studies—this course provides a sweeping portrait of the histories and legacies of settler colonialism, war, dispossession, and slavery in the continent; it also reckons with contemporary issues, like reparations and the LandBack movement. Whenever possible, a global perspective will illuminate aspects of settler colonial states in places such as Australia, Finland, and Japan. More than anything, this sort of perspective will bring into view the magnitude of Indigenous power, resilience, and solidarity. Specific subjects of study include: land loss; Native culture and spirituality; inter-cultural and inter-ethnic relations; human-nature interactions; U.S. land management practices, including resource extraction; Indian law and legal violence; sovereignty and self-determination; decolonization and reparations; gender equity and human rights. This course prioritizes the perspectives, scholarship, and literature of Native Americans. True to the cross-disciplinary nature of NAIS, course material draws from academic literature as well as the arts; this includes, for instance, historical scholarship, legal studies, literature, film, and global history. Over the course of the term we will explore the ways in which these disciplines + the arts offer discrete approaches to the study of Native North America.

Link: Course Site