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ENGLISH 704
Theorizing Indigeneity and Settler Colonialism
Mark Rifkin
W 6:30-9:20; MHRA 3209
Office: MHRA 3129
Office Hours: M 2:15-3:15, W 2:15-3:15 (or by appointment)
Course Description:
This course will consider scholarship over the past fifteen years focused on Indigenous peoples and the settler-states that claim jurisdiction over their lands. More than addressing these as topics, though, we will consider how recent work in Indigenous studies and settler colonial studies offers innovative ways of theorizing the nature of political identity and collective belonging, the contours and content of sovereignty, the interface between state practices and everyday experience, ways of understanding placemaking and personhood, the relationship between nationalism and imperialism, the vexed connections between culture and governance, the possibilities and limits of human rights discourses, and the operation of race within structures of empire. While focusing largely on the U.S., the course also will consider scholarship that focuses on Native peoples in other settler-states, such as Canada, Mexico, Australia, Guyana, and New Zealand/Aotearoa.
Course Goals:
* Examining ways of defining indigeneity and settler colonialism and the stakes of doing so.
* Exploring how scholarly consideration of Indigenous peoples opens insights into dynamics of race, gender, sexuality, nationality, citizenship, placemaking, personhood, and empire.
* Addressing how settler colonialism remains operative even when Indigenous peoples, issues, politics do not appear to be present or central.
* Investigating these questions from a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives.
* Learning how to read scholarly work both sympathetically and critically, raising questions but doing so in ways that engage with the work’s terms, aims, and insights rather than dismissing them.
* Learning how to think of discomfort as possibility, a sign of potential change and growth, rather than a problem – something to be resented or repressed.
* Learning to pay attention to your own responses, questions, confusion, and elation when reading as a way of thinking about both what interests you and how a given text works.
* Challenging your expectations and assumptions – about yourself, the texts we study, and the world in which we live.
Requirements and Grading:
*Attendance: You may miss one class meeting without penalty, but attendance is required at all other class meetings. I will deduct a full grade for additional missed classes. Missing more than three weeks of class is grounds for failing the course.
* Preparation and Participation: I expect everyone to come to class ready to take part in it. The majority of the class should be guided by student questions, concerns, and observations, so I expect everyone to be speaking regularly. In order to prepare for class discussion, every student should have read the short papers for that week and come with questions and comments for your fellow classmates.
Each student also will sign up for five days when you will be a discussant for the class. While everyone should be participating, discussants in particular are responsible for the following:
- Keeping class discussion moving when it slows down.
- Preparing questions about the short papers (see below) and incorporating them into discussion.
- Responding to comments and questions from your classmates.
- Making connections to ideas, questions, and readings from previous weeks.
- Coming in with questions, topics, and passages you would like to discuss.
Preparation and participation in total will count for 50% of the grade for the course.
* Written Work:
* Short Papers -- You will be required during the semester to write 4 short essays, each of which should be 5 pages. You will sign up for these papers during our first class meeting. The paper can be about any aspect of the material for that week, or putting the reading in conversation with readings from previous weeks. It should have a clear thesis presented in the introduction which is supported by relevant quotations from our readings. You can feel free to incorporate outside sources into these papers, but they are not necessary.
Short papers should be submitted to the class electronically via the “Short papers” section on blackboard (under “Discussion Board”) by noon Mondaybefore the relevant class meeting. Please title the posting with your name and the date. I will grade each paper on a check-plus, check, check-minus basis, and I will provide comments on them. They will help direct class discussion. If the paper is not submitted on time you will receive a zero. They will count for 20% of the final grade.
* Final Paper – The final paper should be a 10 page essay that in some fashion engages issues we have been addressing in the class. It should involve a significant amount of research (at least fifteen scholarly sources). The essay can be an extension of one of your short papers, and it will be worth 30% of your final grade.
* Grading: Your final grade will be based on the following percentages:preparation and participation– 50%; short papers - 20%;final paper – 30%.
* Policy on Late Papers: I will not accept late work.
* Plagiarism and Academic Integrity: Plagiarism is presenting someone else's ideas or work as your own or submitting your work done for other classes as original work for this class. If you are using someone else's words, they must be quoted and cited. If you are drawing on someone else's thoughts or argument, you must cite him or her. All sources from the internet must be cited. If you have a question about how to cite someone else's work, consult the MLA Handbook or ask me. When in doubt, cite!!! All work for this class must be originally produced for this class unless you have received my express approval to do otherwise.
Failure to acknowledge sources is plagiarism, regardless of intention.
If you are found to have committed plagiarism of any kind, you will fail the course, and I will submit the matter to the college for disciplinary action.
Course Materials:
BOOKS have been ordered through Addam’s University Bookstore. If you have a different edition of the text, please get a copy of the edition we are using for the course, or else you will not be able to follow along in class discussion or cite the appropriate page numbers when writing about the text. You should purchase copies of the following:
-Joanne Barker, Native Acts: Law, Recognition, and Cultural Authenticity – Duke UP – 0822348519
-Jodi Byrd, The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism – UMN Press – 0816676410
-Karen Engle, The Elusive Promise of Indigenous Development: Rights, Culture, Strategy – Duke UP – 0822347695
-Elizabeth Povinelli, The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism – Duke UP – 0822328682
-Lisa Brooks, The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast – UMN Press – 0816647844
-Nicole M. Guidiotti-Hernández, Unspeakable Violence: Remapping U.S. and Mexican National Imaginaries – Duke UP – 0822350750
-Malinda Maynor Lowery, Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South: Race, Identity, and the Making of a Nation – UNC Press – 0807871117
-Scott Morgensen, Spaces Between Us: Queer Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Decolonization – UMN Press – 0816656339
-Shona Jackson, Creole Indigeneity: Between Myth and Nation in the Caribbean – UMN Press -- 081667776X
-María Josephina Saldaña-Portillo, The Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas and the Age of Development – Duke UP – 0822331667
-Alice Te Punga Somerville, Once Were Pacific: Māori Connections to Oceania – UMN Press – 978-0-8166-7757-3
-Ty P. Kāwaika Tengan, Native Men Remade: Gender and Nation in Contemporary Hawai`i – Duke UP – 0822343215
-Jean Dennison, Colonial Entanglement: Constituting a Twenty-First Century Osage Nation – UNC Press -- 0807872903
Schedule of Assignments:
Terms of Indigeneity and Settlement
8/21Introduction
Joanne Barker, Native Acts
8/28Jodi Byrd, Transit of Empire
[9/4no class – Rosh Hashanah]
9/11Karen Engle, The Elusive Promise of Indigenous Development
9/18Elizabeth Povinelli, The Cunning of Recognition
Histories of Landedness and Settlement
9/25Lisa Brooks, The Common Pot
10/2Nicole M. Guidiotti-Hernández, Unspeakable Violence
10/9Malinda Maynor Lowery, Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South
Performing Settler Identity
10/16Scott Morgensen, Spaces Between Us
10/23Shona Jackson, Creole Indigeneity
10/30María Josephina Saldaña-Portillo, The Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas and the Age of Development
Negotiating Contemporary Indigenous Identity
11/6Alice Te Punga Somerville, Once Were Pacific
11/13Ty P. Kāwaika Tengan, Native Men Remade
11/20Jean Dennison, Colonial Entanglement