Mediating Indianness Re Inscribing Tradition

This new seminar, part 2 of the -Mediating Indianness” project, will not repeat the topics, theory, or primary literature/film of the winter semester course. Interested students will not need to have attended part 1, although part 1 students are encouraged to take part 2! In the winter semester we discovered that this theme is too rich to be covered in one semester, and that we did not have the historical and cultural tools we needed to deal with Native American texts and stances as fully as we would have liked. Therefore, this summer semester we will concentrate on the different Native and First Nations tribes, with their varying histories, life-ways, transculturalities, narratives, and cultural products. Emphasis will be placed on recent literary works, installations, political texts, and uses of the new media which -re-inscribe” Native tradition(s), usually in dialogic ways. I am organizing a four-part panel on -Mediating Indianness” for the MESEA (Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the America) on -Media and Mediated Performances of Ethnicity” in Barcelona 12-16 June. Scholars in Native American Studies from both sides of the Atlantic will take part in this panel; if any students in the seminars from WS 2011/12 and SoSe 2011 are interested in earning a considerable number of credit points, they can attend the MESEA conference with us and see how our theme is dealt with at a large international conference. The two main works we will read in their entirety are from the Ojibwe (Anishinaabe) culture group, but very different indeed: - Drew Hayden Taylor [First Nations Ojibwe or Anishinaabe /Canada], The Night Wanderer: A Native Gothic Novel. Toronto: Annick Press, 2007. (young adult novel) - Gerald Vizenor [Ojibwe or Anishinaabe/Minnesota Chippewa, White Earth Reservation], Chair of Tears: A Novel. Lincoln & London: U of Nebraska Press, February 2012. Please do NOT order these short novels from expensive, faraway sources – at the beginning of the semester I can supply you with economical versions of them. The reader (to be distributed to you in April) will contain short stories, excerpts from novels, numerous autobiographical essays, and background reading. The following films (among others) will play a role in our seminar: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (TV 2007, docufeature film produced by Home Box Office, with well-known actors) Four Sheets to the Wind (2007; NA director Sterlin Harjo) Into the West (2005, 4 DVDs produced by Steven Spielberg; the image of the wheel is meant to connect the settlers' wagon trains with sacred NA -medicine wheels,- also called -sacred hoops) Last of the Dogmen (1995; a renegade band of Navajo, who have lived in isolation from white influences since the 1880s, is discovered) Reel Injun (2009; documentary about Hollywood Indians) Skins (2002, NA director Chris Eyre, staring Graham Greene) The New World (2005, directed by Terrence Malick > Pocahontas and John Smith Thunderheart (1992, with Sam Shepard and NA actor Graham Greene; based on historical reservation tensions in the 1970s) Winter in the Blood (adaptation of Welch’s 1974 novel, to be released 2012) As soon as I know who has been accepted for the seminar, I will send you an email with our moodle code. You will see that I have already set up wikis for information on the key tribes which we will deal with this semester. Fascinating material! - Drew Hayden Taylor [First Nations Ojibwe or Anishinaabe /Canada], The Night Wanderer: A Native Gothic Novel. Toronto: Annick Press, 2007. (young adult novel) - Gerald Vizenor [Ojibwe or Anishinaabe/Minnesota Chippewa, White Earth Reservation], Chair of Tears: A Novel. Lincoln & London: U of Nebraska Press, February 2012. Please do NOT order these short novels from expensive, faraway sources – at the beginning of the semester I can supply you with economical versions of them. The reader (to be sold to you in April) will contain short stories, excerpts from novels, numerous autobiographical essays, and background reading. Anglistik - Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft Universität Siegen SoSe 2012 Ph.D. Waegner Cathy Ph.D