ENG 433 F24: Land as Pedagogy
MW 12:00-1:15p SAKAM A101
This course will pair 19th century Indigenous literature from Turtle Island with contemporary Indigenous texts in order to think about the long and continuing histories of Indigenous knowledges rooted in land. We will consider ways in which Indigenous knowledges both precede and exceed the settler colonial formations of private property, individuated liberal subjectivity, and a relationship to land based upon extraction. The course will serve both as a historical exploration of 19th century and early Indigenous literatures (with a specific focus on literatures from beyond the Pacific) as well as an inquiry into land-based practices of Indigenous knowledges. How might taking seriously what land, plants, and non-human beings know offer us pathways to decolonial futures? How does thinking about the knowledge of land unsettle normative Western ideas about gender? What changes if we consider human beings and nature not as wholly distinct, but as necessarily intertwined? We will also consider 19th century Indigenous literature within the historical contexts of removal, allotment, residential schools, and other forms of ongoing colonial violence, and contrast 19th-century Indigenous-authored texts with canonical white-authored writings on land and nature.
Readings may include:
William Apess, A Son of the Forest (1829)
Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, selected writings (1820s)
Black Hawk, The Life of Black Hawk (1830)
Zitkala-Sa, American Indian Stories (1921)
The True Story of Koolau by his Wife Piilani (1906)
Leanne Simpson, As We Have Always Done (selections) (2017)
Leanne Simpson, This Accident of Being Lost (selections) (2017)
Joshua Whitehead, Making Love with the Land (selections) (2022)
Natalie Diaz, selected poems
Brandy Nālani McDougall, selected poems
Angeline Boulley, Firekeepers’s Daughter (2021)
Books: Angeline Boulley, Firekeeper’s Daughter (2021). All other readings will be available for free online.
Assignments: 8 weekly short responses, close reading essay, land as pedagogy personal/community writing project, final research paper. Creative options will be available.