CONT AM IND LIT (Contemporary American Indian Literature) | Washuta | M-Th 9:40-10:40 | 11188 |
This course will focus on Native autobiography, storytelling and memoir produced during the time before European contact through the present. The act of writing about oneself arrived in the Americas with the European colonizers, and at that time, changes occurred in the mode of Native autobiographical storytelling. Anthropologists began to collect, shape and publish Native stories, using European languages and the written form rather than oral storytelling. During the twentieth century, Native writers who have been considered “authors" who generate “literature" have worked with the traditional storytelling mode to varying degrees. We will examine the role of contemporary Native autobiography, memoir and essay within the larger body of writing being produced.