კურსის ინფორმაცია

In thinking about this course, I recalled an essay by Alison Jones and Kuni Jenkins (Māori). In it, they write that “learning (about difference) from” Indigenous peoples “rather than learning about” Indigenous peoples is key to collaborative approaches between Indigenous and settler researchers (471). We might begin by considering how this prepositional difference might act as a guide to approaching Indigenous literatures. Then, I heard CHamoru lawyer, activist, and writer Julian Aguon discuss on a podcast the notion of “radical listening,” which we might consider as an active mode of engaging with Indigenous texts. How might we learn from and listen to Indigenous voices as a guiding interpretive framework? Or how might we learn from and listen to the texts as sources for methods of analysis as Kimberly Blaeser (White Earth Nation) suggests? Also, how might we learn from and listen to the moments of rupture, where the limits of our positionalities might preclude certain forms of engagement—the moment when “somethings might be out of one’s grasps” (Jones and Jenkins 481)? Importantly, we must also attend to power dynamics at work in these questions. Jones and Jenkins (Māori) write that “the liberal injunction to listen to the Other can turn out to be access for dominant groups to the thoughts, cultures, and lives of others” connoting “imperialist resonances [that] are uncomfortably apt” (480). I offer this reflection as a small constellation of some of my preliminary thoughts, some approaches I have been thinking about in constructing this syllabus.

The main objective for this course is to provide a variety of literary methodologies for approaching Indigenous literatures. As Daniel Heath Justice (Cherokee) writes, he “fundamentally believe[s] that the study of Indigenous writing offers us something different, a complementary but distinctive way of thinking about Indigenous belonging, identities, and relationships” (27). And because “the study of Indigenous writing offers us something different,” then different critical vocabularies, analytic tools, and theoretical frameworks will be needed to approach Indigenous literatures. Specifically, the centering of Indigenous scholarship by Indigenous peoples is crucial to this aim, as is set out by Craig Womack (Creek and Cherokee): “Native literature, and Native literary criticism, written by Native authors, is part of sovereignty” (14). Much has been written about ways to approach Indigenous literatures, and this course hopes to bring diverse perspectives together, alongside selections of poetry and prose, to lay out the critical landscape of Indigenous literatures and theories. We will cover methods and ideas such as Indigenous literary nationalism, Indigenous feminisms, Indigenous queer studies, Indigenous ecopoetics and environmental humanities, amongst other key concepts in Indigenous studies.