How did early American writers use representations of Nativeness to convey their own Americanness? How have Native authors written in relation and resistance to this move? And what does the interplay between these modes reveal about the evolution of nation-making across American literary cultures? Staying with this productive tension, this course will proceed in two parts. First, pairing works by early Anglo-American authors like Mary Rowlandson and Lydia Maria Child with readings in Native studies, settler colonial studies, and decolonial theory, we will excavate how canonical texts have naturalized American settlement while also exploring critical approaches that denaturalize those views. From there, we will move to wholly center 20th and 21st century Native voices, from canonized Native writers like Tommy Orange and Leslie Marmon Silko to Native horror satirists Stephen Graham Jones and Morgan Talty, focusing on the various tools and methods through which these authors converse and contend with Native appropriation and erasure. Throughout, this course will provide the theoretical grounding to gain a decolonial perspective on American literary history, to engage with complicated questions of American identity formation, and to critically read and analyze texts, Native narratives in their explicit and implicit forms. (Note: This Writing-Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) course fulfills WIM for English majors. Non-majors are welcome, space permitting. For enrollment permission contact farrahm@stanford.edu.)
5 units · Letter (ABCD/NP)
How did early American writers use representations of Nativeness to convey their own Americanness? How have Native authors written in relation and resistance to this move? And what does the interplay between these modes reveal about the evolution of nation-making across American literary cultures? Staying with this productive tension, this course will proceed in two parts. First, pairing works by early Anglo-American authors like Mary Rowlandson and Lydia Maria Child with readings in Native studies, settler colonial studies, and decolonial theory, we will excavate how canonical texts have naturalized American settlement while also exploring critical approaches that denaturalize those views. From there, we will move to wholly center 20th and 21st century Native voices, from canonized Native writers like Tommy Orange and Leslie Marmon Silko to Native horror satirists Stephen Graham Jones and Morgan Talty, focusing on the various tools and methods through which these authors converse and contend with Native appropriation and erasure. Throughout, this course will provide the theoretical grounding to gain a decolonial perspective on American literary history, to engage with complicated questions of American identity formation, and to critically read and analyze texts, Native narratives in their explicit and implicit forms. (Note: This Writing-Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) course fulfills WIM for English majors. Non-majors are welcome, space permitting. For enrollment permission contact farrahm@stanford.edu.)