Am Indians in Amer Imagination

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

American Indians in the American Imagination Why are Americans so enamored by stereotypical images of Native Americans and their culture— be it dreamcatchers, feathered mascots, or Indigenous Disney princesses? Why is there an Native-inspired figure atop the nation’s Capitol building or 56 busts of an unnamed chief carved into Dumbarton Bridge? This course critically examines how Native Americans have become so curiously central and simultaneously, misrepresented within the American cultural imagination. Engaging in a wide-variety of source materials from film and literature to public monuments and memorials, students will trace the shifting representation, romanticization, and appropriation of Native people in the United States from the early republic to the twentieth century. Our objective is not only to examine and dispel pervasive stereotypes regarding Native peoples, but to understand the foundational role of these images in the formation of an American national identity. Furthermore, we will consider how such portrayals have reinforced the racism, violence, and land dispossession which Native communities still experience today. Most importantly, however, this course uplifts the multitude of ways that Indigenous people have critiqued, subverted, and resisted such depictions—uplifting the diversity, beauty, and self-determination of Indian Country.