HDS 3740: Body, Spirit, and Indigenous Expressive Culture

Professor Robert Warrior

2024 Fall Term

Thursdays, 3:00 - 5:00 PM

This course focuses on the ways Indigenous artists and media makers represent embodied religious and spiritual experiences in their work.  In considering how embodiment and various forms of spirituality, ceremony, and religious practice figure in contemporary Indigenous expression, the course questions the definitional framing of the category of expressive culture, including as it does a wide-ranging syllabus that brings issues from fiction, life-writing, film, painting, poetry, food studies, and scholarly work on the relationship of technology to Indigenous health and well-being into conversation. Authors, artists, and media makers on the syllabus include Victor Masayesva, Louise Erdrich, Sterlin Harjo, Therese Marie Mailhot, Elissa Washuta, Sean Sherman, Elle Mejia Tailfeathers, Hi’ilei Hobart, Joshua Whitehead, and Billy Ray Belcourt.