Native American Literature Before 1968

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

In 1968, Kiowa writer N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for American literature, ushering in an unprecedented era of Native literary production widely known as the Native American Renaissance. Today, many readers consider this the "arrival" of Native authors on the American literary scene. While the explosion of Native writing and the critical tradition that emerged from it carved out much needed cultural and institutional spaces for Native self-representation and Native Studies, it also had the unintended effect of privileging contemporary Native novels over writing from other periods and across a variety of genres and forms. This introductory course on Native American literature widens the net to include an array of Native self-representation across genres, regions, periods, forms, and tribal nations, offering an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of Native Studies. Class discussions and written assignments will explore questions of genre and form as well as issues related to identity, sovereignty, environmental activism, and survivance.