Course Descriptions

AIS 1100 Introduction to American Indian Studies I: Indigenous North America to 1890 (1110) is not a prerequisite to 1100)

This course provides an interdisciplinary introduction to the cultures and histories of American Indian Nations north of Mexico to 1890. Lectures and discussion sections begin with a survey of the Pre-columbian Indian occupation of North America, and then examine the political, economic, cultural, legal, and demographic consequences of European and American colonialism. The course will emphasize the contemporary relevance of traditional values, as well as the ways in which the deep past continues to affect the present and future of Indian peoples. Course materials will address Indian histories and cultures from a variety of perspectives, including those of the humanities, social sciences, and expressive arts.

AIS 1110 Introduction to American Indian Studies II: Contemporary Issues in Indigenous North America (1110 is not a prerequisite to 1110)

This course provides an interdisciplinary focus upon issues in contemporary American Indian communities. Lectures and discussion sections will survey key moments in policy and law that (1) created the conditions for American and Canadian settlement; (2) reformulated traditional Indian governance and culture; and (3) created the dynamic interplay between American Indian Peoples and Nations with each other and with the state. This course will emphasize Indian sovereignty, nationhood, agency, and conditions of entanglement that formulated strategies of not only of American and Canadian settlement, but also resistance, dignity and autonomy for contemporary American Indian Peoples and Nations. Course materials will be drawn from the humanities, social science and expressive arts.

AIS 2350 Archaeology of North American Indians

This introductory course surveys archaeology's contributions to the study of American Indian cultural diversity and change in North America north of Mexico. Lectures and readings will examine topics ranging from the debate over when the continent was first inhabited to present-day conflicts between Native Americans and archaeologists over excavation and the interpretation of the past. We will review important archaeological sites such as Chaco Canyon, Cahokia, Lamoka Lake, and the Little Bighorn battlefield. A principal focus will be on major transformations in life ways such as the adoption of agriculture, the development of political-economic hierarchies, and the disruptions that accompanied the arrival of Europeans to the continent.

AIS 2360 Natives Peoples of the Northeast

This course examines the history and culture of the indigenous peoples of northeastern North America, from ancient times through the era of contact with Europeans to the present day. The course emphasizes the fascinating and dramatic series of transformations and adaptations undertaken by Native peoples in the Northeast which have contributed to their ongoing survival in the twenty-first century. Readings and discussions will be drawn from a wide range of secondary and primary sources, including: historical documents, traditional narratives, archaeological reports, the Internet, and visual representations of material culture. The class will emphasize critical reading of texts, writing, and discussion.

AIS 2390 Seminar in Iroquois History

This interdisciplinary seminar explores the history and culture of Iroquois people from ancient times, through their initial contacts with European settlers, to their present-day struggles and achievements under colonial circumstances in North America.

AIS 2600 Introduction to American Indian Literature

The purpose of this course is to provide an introduction to U.S. American Indian literatures, both oral and written. The method of studying these literatures will emphasize historical, legal, and cultural contexts as well as current critical debates over methodological approaches. In addition to examples of the oral tradition transcribed in writing, we will study a variety of written genres from their beginnings in the late eighteenth-century including autobiography, the essay, poetry, and fiction. We will begin the course by reading two translations from the oral tradition: Paul Radin's translation/compilation of Winnebago trickster narratives, and Paul Zolbrod's translation of the Diné bahane´: The Navajo Creation Story. After that we will read a range of Native authors from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including Samson Occom, William Apess, Sarah Winemucca, Zitkala-Sa, Mourning Dove, Black Elk, D'Arcy McNickle, N. Scott Momaday, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Leslie Marmon Silko, James Welch, Luci Tapahonso, Simon Ortiz, Gerald Vizenor, Diane Glancy, Ray A. Young Bear, Sherman Alexie, and Debra Magpie Earling.

AIS 2660 Introduction to Native American History

With the abandonment of earlier perspectives grounded in romantic and evolutionary stereotypes, Native American history is currently one of the most exciting, dynamic, and contentious fields of inquiry into America's past. This course introduces students to the key themes and trends in the history of North America's indigenous peoples by taking an issues-oriented approach. We will cover material ranging from the debate over the Native American population at the time of first European contact to contemporary social and political struggles over casino gambling and land claims. The course stresses the ongoing complexity and change in Native American societies and will emphasize the theme of Native peoples' creative adaptations to historical change.

AIS 3110 Social Movements

Social movements are collective efforts by relatively powerless groups of people to change society. Social movements have occurred throughout history and the world, even under the most repressive regimes. The intellectual rationale underlying the study of social movements is the belief that they are an important source of social change. Social movements are typically conceptualized as non-(or extra-) institutional political activity. That is, they are "politics by other means." In this course, we will concentrate on twentieth century U.S. movements for social justice, including the environmental justice movement, the American Indian (Red Power) movement, and the anti-globalization movement.

AIS 3330      Indigenous and Local Ecological Knowledge

Based on indigenous and local “ways of knowing,” this course: (1) presents a theoretical and humanistic framework from which to understand generation of ecological knowledge; (2) examines processes by which to engage indigenous and local knowledge of natural resources, the non-human environment, and the human –environment interactions; and (3) reflects upon the relevance of this knowledge to climatic change, resource extraction, food sovereignty, and issues of sustainability and conversation.

AIS 3400 Contested Terrain: Hawaii

This course draws from the fields of history, political science, and sociology to present an historical understanding of contemporary Hawaiian society. Topics include Western contact, establishment of Western institutions, overthrow of a sovereign government, annexation, integration into the United States. Direct experience with Hawaiian leaders and institutions are incorporated to address contemporary issues: sovereignty, economic development/dependency, social change, and land use as a sociopolitical and cultural struggle.

AIS 3480 / 6480 Iroquois Archaeology (Course requirements differ at the 300 and 600 levels).

This course surveys the long-term development of Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) culture from an archaeological perspective. Issues examined will include the geographic origins of the Iroquois; material culture, settlement, and subsistence; the founding of the Iroquois Confederacy; Iroquois responses to European -borne diseases, the fur trade, and territorial encroachment; the practicalities of doing Indian archaeology in New York State and contemporary Haudenosaunee perspectives on Archaeology. The Six Nations Iroquois will be emphasized with some material drawn from surrounding Northern Iroquoian groups. Visits to local archaeological sites and museum collections will supplement classroom instruction.

AIS 3860 Studies in U.S. Fiction after 1900: Contemporary American Indian Fiction of the United States

This course will read a selection of contemporary U.S. American Indian fiction from both established and emerging writers. The focus of the course will be the (post)colonial situation of Native communities in the U.S., a situation created by the unique and contradictory position of U.S. American Indians tribes as at once sovereign nations, U.S. dependencies, and, from the standpoint of U.S. citizenship, communities fully integrated in the U.S.A. The writers we will read come from a list that includes: Leslie Marmon Silko, Gerald Vizenor, James Welch, Linda Hogan, Diane Glancy, Adrian Louis, Thomas King, Gordon Henry, Jr., Debra Magpie Earling, Anna Lee Walters, Charles H. Red Corn, Craig Womack, Greg Sarris, Susan Power, Ray A. Young Bear, and Sherman Alexie.

AIS 4300 Native American Philosophies

This course will focus on Native American (Alaskan, Hawaiian, and Indian) thought from the pre-invasion period (before 1492) to the present as it is contained in both oral narratives and written texts (non-fiction, fiction, and poetry). The purpose of the course will be twofold. First, to understand how and in what forms Native Americans from a range of cultures think about subject matters in a range of areas: social, spiritual, legal, political, aesthetic, scientific, environmental, and historical. Second, to ask how Native philosophies can help us answer the following question: what is a just community? Narratives and texts will be taken from a list that includes: Paul Zolbrod, trans. Diné bahanè: the Navajo Creation Story; Greg Sarris, Keeping Slug Woman Alive: A Holistic Approach to American Indian Texts; Radin and Blowsnake, The Trickster ; Julie Cruikshank, Angela Sidney, Kitty Smith and Annie Ned, Life Lived Like a Story; William Apess, A Son of the Forest; Charles Eastman, The Soul of the Indian; Black Elk and Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks; Linda Hogan, Power; Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony ; Haunani-Kay Trask, From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaii; Taiaiake Alfred, Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto; Gerald Vizenor, Manifest Manners: Narratives on post-indian Survivance ; Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life; Greg Cajete, Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence; Vine Deloria, Jr. and Clifford M. Lytle, American Indians, American Justice; and Wendy Rose, Bone. Permission of instructor required.

AIS 4350 /6350 Indigenous Peoples and Globalization (Course requirements differ at the 400 and 600 levels)

This course will examine issues of globalization and how they affect indigenous people worldwide. The processes of globalization, whether under the auspices of the World Trade Organization and regional economic agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement or the de-territorialization of social and political arrangement co- temporal with modernization, have had profound social, cultural and economic impacts upon indigenous peoples. At issue are the lands, resources, traditional knowledge, cultural property and tribal sovereignty of indigenous peoples. In this course we will examine the multifarious and complex issues of impact of globalization on the world's indigenous peoples, such as the effect of free trade and development on indigenous peoples; issues of cultural 'property' such as songs and stories of native artists; intellectual property such as plant medicines; the question of treaties and water rights; and whether and to what extent civil society can truly include and address the interests of indigenous peoples.

AIS 4720/7720 Historical Archaeology of Indigenous Peoples (course requirements differ between 400 and 700 levels)

This seminar uses archaeology to examine the responses of non-state indigenous peoples across the world to European expansion and colonialism over the past 500 years. Archaeology provides a perspective on indigenous lives that both supplements and challenges document-based histories. We will assess the strengths and weaknesses of various theories of culture contact, and explore a series of archaeological case studies, using examples primarily from North America with lesser emphasis on Africa and the Pacific. The seminar provides a comparative perspective on indigenous-colonial relationships, in particular exploring the hard-fought spaces of relative autonomy created and sustained by indigenous peoples.

AIS 4900 New World Encounters

The discovery of the Americas, wrote Francisco Lopez de Gomara in 1552, was "the greatest event since the creation of the world, excepting the Incarnation and Death of Him who created it." Five centuries have not diminished either the overwhelming importance or the strangeness of the early encounter between Europeans and the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Taking a comparative approach, this course will conceptualize early American history as the product of reciprocal cultural encounters by assessing the various experiences of Spanish, French, and English newcomers in different regions of the Americas. Critical interpretation of primary source material will be emphasized in the course, as will the development of students' ability to reflect critically on these documents, taking into account the perspective of both the colonizers and the colonized.

AIS 4970 Independent Study

Topic and credit hours to be mutually arranged between faculty and student. Independent Study Forms must be approved by American Indian Program Office.

AIS 6000 American Indian Studies

AIS 6100 American Indian Studies Pro-seminar

Graduate level course that will introduce students to on-going research in the field of American Indian Studies in proseminar / colloquia format. Advanced graduate students are expected to present their work in progress and all are expected to attend all seminars and provide presenters with critical and constructive commentary on papers.

AIS 6350 Indigenous Peoples and Globalization

Explores ways in which processes of globalization affect indigenous peoples worldwide and the strategies indigenous peoples are using to deal with those pressures. Globalization, whether under the auspices of the World Trade Organization and regional economic agreements such as the NAFTA or the deterritorialization of social and political arrangements cotemporal with modernization or the expansion of communication technology and its impact on traditional knowledge systems, have had profound social, cultural, and economic impacts on indigenous peoples. At issue are the lands, resources, traditional knowledge, intellectual and cultural property, and indigenous struggles for recognition and self-determination

AIS 6710 Law and Literature in the Antebellum USA

As an example of the interdisciplinary action between law and literature, this course will focus on the relationship from the nineteenth century to the present between federal Indian law and American Indian literatures. The course will engage such topics as the limits of western law, the idea of postcoloniality, sovereignty and nation state, the Native critique of U.S. imperialism, and the question of interdisciplinarity itself. The readings will come from federal Indian case and statute law and native literatures, including among others the work of William Apress, Zitkala-Sa, Mourning Dove, D’Arcy McNickle, Wendy Rose, Gerald Vizenor, Simon Ortiz, Linda Hogan, and Leslie, Marmon Sikko

AIS 6970 Independent Study

A student may with approval of a faculty adviser, study a problem or topic not covered in a regular course or may undertake tutorial study of an independent nature in an area of interest in American Indian Studies

AIS 7260 Federal Indian Law: The Legal construction of Indian Country

Interdisciplinary approaches to Federal Indian Law This is an interdisciplinary seminar open to both students in the Law School and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. While its focus is the historic development of federal Indian law, it will address fundamental theoretical issues such as the cultural limits of Western law, the situation of indigenous peoples in a postcolonial context, and the critical relationship between law and literature