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Any reflections on First Nations, Métis, and Inuit cultures on Turtle Island (North America) should be based on the fact that their heterogeneous origins precede European contact. Indigenous communities existed as autonomous nations on the American continent, featuring diverse cultures and histories that are thousands of years old. When European settlers invaded the continent from the 15th century onward, specific forms of colonial domination have been established on the basis of Eurocentric hegemonic power discourses. North American Indigenous communal and individual well-being, land claims, and claims for nation-to-nation independence are clearly related to cultural self-representations, visibilities, and centralities of Native knowledge and belief systems. The making visible of diverse Indigenous perspectives and the understanding of knowledge production as cultural performances in texts and artworks are therefore political acts of revitalizing and reasserting Indigeneities as cultural and collective continuities.
This course will explore lived experiences in various forms of storytelling by Indigenous authors/artists/activists in the United States and Canada, countries that are defined as settler nation states. This course will offer literary and visual narratives that capture Native continuities and contact conflicts between Indigenous communities and settler societies, following the “Native American Renaissance” of the 1960s and 1970s. We will discover ongoing literary/artistic activism by Indigenous artists/authors who narrate and celebrate cultural traditions and Postindian identities at the intersections of race/ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and age.
- I recommend reading the following pages as preliminary background information for the seminar: Zapf, Hubert, ed. Amerikanische Literaturgeschichte. 3rd ed. Stuttgart, Weimar: J.B. Metzler. 2010. 393-421.
- A reader with most of the texts and a course schedule will be provided at the Sprintout copy shop @Georgenstraße at the beginning of the summer semester 2017.
- Requirements: Students are expected to give short presentations or to organize a session’s discussion. Continuous active participation and attendance is required and expected.
- Registration: Please register for this seminar via e-mail to Amina.grunewald@rz.hu-berlin.de, including your subjects of study and your semester.
- Office Hours: Please inquire after individual appointments via e-mail.
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