230584 Native American Literature (S) (SoSe 2008)

In this survey course we will look at Native American examples of oral narrative, song, oratory, autobiography, modern poetry, and modern fiction. We will supplement our reading of these texts with primary historical documents and secondary texts (including recent archeological findings) in order to help us situate these literary works in their proper cultural and historical contexts. With ancient works such as oral narratives and songs, we will pay close attention to the rhetorical strategies mobilized to further the works' ceremonial aims, and attempt to reconstruct those rhetorical strategies lost in the transition from public performance to print. With the more modern texts we will consider how Native American authors attempt to preserve or reclaim aspects of tribal identity and culture in the historical wake of genocide, loss of homeland, and pop-cultural constructions of "Indian-ness." However, we will also address ways in which those texts affirm cultural hybridity and reformulate what it means to be Native for a postmodern age.