Indigenous Literary Modernisms
In this course, we will explore how we think about Indigenous lives, literatures, and cultural productions in what is now known as the United States from the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Often positioned as the antithesis to both modernity and modernism, Indigenous peoples in fact actively engaged with the impacts of modernity to Indigenous communities and Native Nations. This course re-positions Indigenous lives and experiences as central--not antithetical or marginal--to literary modernism and modernity.
Toward this purpose, we will examine a wide array of Indigenous literatures that challenge conventional notions of modernity and modernism often defined through the bloody histories of World War I or through the aesthetic, political, and cultural transformations of the European/American metropolis. From conventional literary forms of autobiography, narrative fiction, poetry, and drama; to public speeches, editorials, legal arguments, and Congressional testimonies; to emerging forms of performance, music, cinema, and radio, this course explores how Indigenous "modernists" took these "modern" modes of representation as opportunities to indigenize, to repurpose toward Indigenous ends. At the same time, Indigenous people often wielded these modern forms and styles as weapons against ongoing projects of settler colonialism. We will also look at how Indigenous modernist literatures offer powerful critiques of the whole machinery of colonial modernity that continues to impact our lives today.