Special Themes in Native and Indigenous Studies: Indigenous Speculative Fiction

Fulfills English Department Diversity Intensive Requirement

In this course we will be looking at how Indigenous writers have employed mythology in contemporary horror, gothic, and speculative fiction. We'll begin with an examination of what Indigenous people have had to say to outsiders about mythologies and how Indigenous writers have thought about the importance of storytelling over time. Next we'll be reading works by a range of North American Indigenous writers, including Waubgeshig Rice (Anishinaabe), Cherie Dimaline (Métis), Eden Robinson (Haisla), Stephen Graham Jones (Blackfeet), and others. We'll see how writers address historical trauma, reclaim mythologies, and imagine futures through these different genres. They also reimagine the genres themselves, so along the way we will be looking at various theories of monsters, the Gothic, and speculative fiction in order to determine how Indigenous writers have transformed prevailing conventions to tell new stories.