Mediating Indianness Stereotyping as Cultural Strategy

This project seminar will focus on the theme of a triple panel for the MESEA (Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the Americas) conference in Barcelona/Spain in June 2012. The topic of the conference is -Media and Mediated Performances of Ethnicity”; scholars in Native American Studies from both Germany and the U.S. will be presenting papers on the triple panel called -Mediating Indianness.” Perhaps some of the HS students will want to attend the conference? The material for the seminar will arise from the primary literature, historical background, theory, and specific themes relevant for this panel. We will link these specific themes by investigating them largely in terms of the ways stereotyping is reinforced, instrumentalized, or subverted through the mediation. Some of the specific themes are these: mediated transculturality with Buffalo Bill's internationally ‘wildly’ popular traveling -Wild West Shows” (1872-1908) from William Wellman (glorifying Hollywood movie 1944) to Robert Altman (critical film 1976) and James Welch (novel Heartsong of Charging Elk 2000) to YouTube; Black Indian Slave Narratives recorded by the Federal Writers' Project in the 1930s, in connection with James McBride's novel Miracle at St. Anna (2003) and Spike Lee's film adaptation (2008); cinematic resurrections of the Native American/Hispanic ‘bandit’ Joaquin Murieta (the archetype of Zorro) in a transnational perspective; Jim Jarmusch’s movie -Dead Man” (1995) – still thwarting all cultural and cinematic expectations; music and media via Quese IMC and Culture Shock Camp; images of Annie Mae Pictou Aquash in movies and comic books; performance and gender in Northern Ute Bear Dance (Utah); Canadian First Nations television programming; the award-winning movie Four Sheets to the Wind (2007), directed by Sterlin Harjo (Seminole/Creek), an exciting new Native American film artist; play by Eric Gansworth (Onondaga Nation) called Re-Creation Story (2008), which brings Native oral tradition to the stage; new ipod/facebook uses of the Cherokee syllabary and online language classes. We will have some guest lecturers who are experts on a few of these topics. Students will specialize in one project. Everyone will read Heartsong of Charging Elk (2000), the last novel written by James Welch, a major Native American author. Of course all seminar participants will read the entire seminar -reader.” Please purchase an affordable edition of James Welch, The Heartsong of Charging Elk (2000); this was published in the UK as Heartsong in 2001. Please do not order an expensive edition; I'll have a photocopyable master copy if you cannot locate a -cheap- edition. (This novel is long, but very worthwhile!) All the other seminar material (theory and novel excerpts, plays, film reviews, etc.) will be contained in the semester reader. Anglistik - Literaturwissenschaft Universität Siegen WiSe 2011/12 Anglistik - Sprachpraxis Ph.D. Waegner Cathy Ph.D