| Module Identifier |
EN34420 |
| Module Title |
NATIVE AMERICAN LITERATURE |
| Academic Year |
2002/2003 |
| Co-ordinator |
Dr Martin Padget |
| Semester |
Intended for use in future years |
| Next year offered |
N/A |
| Next semester offered |
N/A |
| Course delivery |
Seminars / Tutorials | 20 Hours Seminar. (10 x 2 hr seminar workshops) |
| Assessment |
Semester Assessment | Continuous Assessment: 2 essays (2,500 words each) | 100% |
| |
Supplementary Assessment | Resubmit any failed elements and/or make good any missing elements. | |
Learning outcomes
On completion of this module students should typically be able to:
- discuss the subject coherently;
- write about the subject in a well-structured and well argued manner;
- have added to their knowledge of the corpus of American literature;
- have developed their powers of critical analysis.
Brief description
In her poem 'Anchorage', Creek poet Joy Harjo speaks of 'the fantastic and terrible story of all our survival', while in 'The Significance of a Veteran's Day', Acoma poet Simon Ortiz has written: 'I am talking about how we have been able/ to survive insignificance'. Harjo and Ortiz are two among a growing number of contemporary Native American writers who have used autobiography, poetry and fiction to investigate what it means to be 'Indian' in the late twentieth-century United States. Through the semester we shall consider how both contemporary and historical Native American writers have dramatised cultural survival and questions of individual and tribal identity through a variety of literary forms. Literature by both 'mixedbloods' and 'fullbloods' is represented. We begin the course by examining the complex and dynamic relationships between Native Americans and the natural world as they are expressed through oral narratives, songs, chants, and ceremonies. We proceed by exploring a variety of textual forms through which American Indian voices were represented from the late eighteenth century through to the early twentieth century. These forms include oratory, sermons, life histories, poetry, collaborative autobiography, and novels. In the latter half of the course we will critique literature by a variety of contemporary authors and poets.
Aims
- to investigate the histories and cultures of North American Indians, paying particular attention to how differences between Indian and non-Indian world views, themes, genres, and techniques are articulated in American Indian literature;
- to examine the great diversity of Native American oral and written storytelling. To this end we will read creation myths, traditional oral narratives and songs, collaborative autobiographies, and poetry and fiction;
- to understand the unique place of Native Americans in U.S. society as indigenous peoples and as an ethnic and cultural minority in a polyglot nation.
Content
Programme:
1: Introduction to Native American Literatures
Introduction and overview.
View: Selected art and photography of Native Americans; Victor Masayesva, Jr, Itam Hakim Hopiit
2 & 3: Oral Literatures
Required reading: 'Introduction', 'Tales', 'Songs' and 'Oratory' sections from Velie (3-151). Pay particular attention to 'The Origin Myth of Acoma', 'The Winnebago Trickster Cycle', and 'Walam Olum'
4: 'The End of Our Merrymaking': An Indian View of Westward Expansion
Required reading: Sarah Winnemucca, Life among the Piutes (1883)
5: Autobiography I
Required reading: Geronimo and S. M. Barrett, Geronimo: His Own Story (1906)
6: Autobiography II
Required reading: Black Elk and John G. Neihardt (ed.), Black Elk Speaks (1933)
7: The Early Twentieth Century in Recent Native American Fiction
Required reading: Louise Erdrich, Tracks (1988)
8: 'Native American Renaissance'
Required reading: N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn (1968)
9: Contemporary Native American Literature and Film
Required reading: Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993)
Required viewing: Smoke Signals (dir. Chris Eyre, 1998)
10: Poetry
Required reading: Poetry selections from Velie
Set Texts (in order of reading):
Alan R. Velie, ed., American Indian Literature: An Anthology (revised edition, 1991)
Sarah Winnemucca, Life among the Piutes (1883)
Charles Eastman, From the Deep Woods to Civilization (1916)
Black Elk and John G. Neihardt, ed., Black Elk Speaks (1932)
N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn (1968)
Louise Erdrich, Tracks (1988)
Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993)