Studies in Native American and Indigenous Literature: Contemporary Indigenous Literature—Online—Capstone eligible [***]

More than one Indigenous critic has observed that somewhere around 2000, Indigenous writing changed: instead of writers speaking primarily to a broad non-Indigenous readership, they began to speak primarily to an Indigenous readership, giving less attention to explaining themselves to outsiders and more to the necessity of imagining an Indigenous future. This course examines that transition in North American Indigenous fiction writing, comparing works from what has been called the Native American Renaissance of the 1970s through the 1990s with contemporary works from the post-2000 period. We'll be looking at the place of traditional knowledge in literary fiction; shifting perspectives on the reservation; the relation between literary fiction and social and political movements for self-determination and sovereignty; and the emergence of Indigenous literary criticism over the period. Especially in relation to more recent works, we'll pay attention to the dynamic between writers' refusal of limitations on their art on the one hand and concern for speaking to an Indigenous future on the other. Finally, we'll be looking at the contemporary proliferation of Indigenous writers working in the speculative genres of the Gothic, horror, and science fiction. Writers may include N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, Thomas King, Gerald Vizenor, Eden Robinson, David Treuer, Stephen Graham Jones. Course work will include presentations, brief response papers, two critical papers, and one reflection paper.