Historical Trauma and Healing in
Native American Literature and Culture
 

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Description
Course Requirements
Class Schedule
Resources

Books for the Course:
Eating Fire, Tasting Blood: An Anthology of the American Indian Holocaust, Marijo Moore, Editor
Kiss of the Fur Queen, Tomson Highway
Fools Crow, James Welch
Native American Post-Colonial Psychology, Eduardo Duran
Perma Red, Debra Magpie Earling

We will read numerous secondary critical essays (mostly available through pdf on this site), and watch both documentary and feature films.

Course Requirements:
1. Consistent attendance and active participation in discussion
2. Thoughtful and careful preparation for class, including reading of all assigned material and questions to share with class
3. Written responses to some readings as assigned
4. Facilitation of one or more assigned readings
5. A typed proposal for a final project that includes an explanation of what you would like to explore related to the course topic: tell me the primary materials you'll analyze (literature, music, community functions, etc.) and some of the secondary sources you'll use. Include if you can the theoretic focus from historical trauma theory, as well as secondary sources for your primary area of research (e.g. criticism of Kiss of the Fur Queen, essays on the appropriation of Indian culture by non-Natives, etc.). I encourage you to be creative and take risks; these need not be a straightforward literary analysis. You may make it multi-genre and multimedia.
6. A final project (e.g. a 12-15 page researched, analytical and/or or multi-genre/multimedia presentation). You will give a 10-15 minute oral presentation of your project to the class at the end of the course.

Suggestions for a Successful Seminar Experience

A seminar format seeks to foster a collaborative climate in which all seminar participants share in and contribute to the conversation.  We seek to avoid an authoritarian environment in which the seminar participants are lectured to or in which a few control the conversation.  No single person should monopolize the conversation. While it is not the role of the facilitator to "call on you," he or she certainly can in order to keep the conversation moving around the table.  

In a seminar, the responsibilities and roles of facilitators and participants are thus equally shared.  Simply because its someone else’s turn to be a facilitator for a particular session does not lessen everyone's responsibility to participate and contribute to the conversation. Unlike a lecture format, no one can assume a passive, observational role in a seminar.  The key word in a seminar format is "conversation."

It is also important to keep your comments focused on the question at hand and work at making your comments distinct and precise. Think about giving others the opportunity to add to the conversation. Put as much energy into sharing your ideas and speaking aloud, as you do in truly listening to others share their ideas. While any conversation can wander off course (which can be very creative and insightful), a seminar conversation should attempt to be anchored to the assigned texts, generating and "wandering off course" with questions and conversations based upon those texts.

It is important to come well prepared, having read the assigned text thoroughly, with a eye on its cultural and literary  implications. While the facilitator will have isolated specific text passages for discussion and have questions relating to those passages, seminar participants should also write out questions concerning areas that for them need clarification, areas of research and theory implications, and/or areas of general interest. Then add those questions to the conversation when appropriate given the flow of the conversation at hand. Do not come to the seminar and try to wing it.