AIS 100 Introduction to American Indian Studies I: Indigenous North America to 1890
(111 is not a prerequisite to 110)
This course provides an interdisciplinary introduction to the cultures and histories of American
Indian Nations north of Mexico to 1890. Lectures and discussion sections begin with a survey of
the Pre-columbian Indian occupation of North America, and then examine the political, economic,
cultural, legal, and demographic consequences of European and American colonialism. The course will
emphasize the contemporary relevance of traditional values, as well as the ways in which the deep
past continues to affect the present and future of Indian peoples. Course materials will address
Indian histories and cultures from a variety of perspectives, including those of the humanities,
social sciences, and expressive arts.
AIS 101 Introduction to American Indian Studies II: Contemporary Issues in
Indigenous North America (110 is not a prerequisite to 111)
This course provides an interdisciplinary focus upon issues in contemporary American Indian
communities. Lectures and discussion sections will survey key moments in policy and law that
(1) created the conditions for American and Canadian settlement; (2) reformulated traditional
Indian governance and culture; and (3) created the dynamic interplay between American Indian
Peoples and Nations with each other and with the state. This course will emphasize Indian
sovereignty, nationhood, agency, and conditions of entanglement that formulated strategies of not
only of American and Canadian settlement, but also resistance, dignity and autonomy for contemporary
American Indian Peoples and Nations. Course materials will be drawn from the humanities, social science
and expressive arts.
AIS 195 Colonial Latin America
This course examines the colonial "encounter" of Iberia, Africa, and the New World, which began in
1492. Topics include economic and social organization of the colonies; the cultural hybridity that
preceded as well as developed within colonialism; the production of ethnicity and race; slavery,
forced labor and economic stratification; intellectual currents and daily life; indigenous and slave
resistance and rebellion; and independence.
AIS 230 Cultures of Native North America
A survey of the principal Inuit and American Indian culture areas north of Mexico. Selected cultures
will be examined to bring out distinctive features of the economy, social organization, religion, and
worldview. Although the course concentrates on traditional cultures, some lectures and readings deal
with changes in native ways of life that have occurred during the period of European-Indian contact.
AIS 235 Archaeology of North American Indians
This introductory course surveys archaeology's contributions to the study of American Indian cultural
diversity and change in North America north of Mexico. Lectures and readings will examine topics
ranging from the debate over when the continent was first inhabited to present-day conflicts between
Native Americans and archaeologists over excavation and the interpretation of the past. We will review
important archaeological sites such as Chaco Canyon, Cahokia, Lamoka Lake, and the Little Bighorn
battlefield. A principal focus will be on major transformations in life ways such as the adoption of
agriculture, the development of political-economic hierarchies, and the disruptions that accompanied
the arrival of Europeans to the continent.
AIS 236 Natives Peoples of the Northeast
This course examines the history and culture of the indigenous peoples of northeastern North America,
from ancient times through the era of contact with Europeans to the present day. The course emphasizes
the fascinating and dramatic series of transformations and adaptations undertaken by Native peoples in
the Northeast which have contributed to their ongoing survival in the twenty-first century. Readings
and discussions will be drawn from a wide range of secondary and primary sources, including:
historical documents, traditional narratives, archaeological reports, the Internet, and visual
representations of material culture. The class will emphasize critical reading of texts, writing, and
discussion.
AIS 239 Seminar in Iroquois History
This interdisciplinary seminar explores the history and culture of Iroquois people from ancient times,
through their initial contacts with European settlers, to their present-day struggles and achievements
under colonial circumstances in North America.
AIS 260 Introduction to American Indian Literature
The purpose of this course is to provide an introduction to U.S. American Indian literatures, both
oral and written. The method of studying these literatures will emphasize historical, legal, and
cultural contexts as well as current critical debates over methodological approaches. In addition to
examples of the oral tradition transcribed in writing, we will study a variety of written genres from
their beginnings in the late eighteenth-century including autobiography, the essay, poetry, and
fiction. We will begin the course by reading two translations from the oral tradition: Paul Radin's
translation/compilation of Winnebago trickster narratives, and Paul Zolbrod's translation of the Diné
bahane´: The Navajo Creation Story. After that we will read a range of Native authors from the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including Samson Occom, William Apess, Sarah Winemucca,
Zitkala-Sa, Mourning Dove, Black Elk, D'Arcy McNickle, N. Scott Momaday, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Leslie
Marmon Silko, James Welch, Luci Tapahonso, Simon Ortiz, Gerald Vizenor, Diane Glancy, Ray A. Young
Bear, Sherman Alexie, and Debra Magpie Earling.
AIS 266 Introduction to Native American History
With the abandonment of earlier perspectives grounded in romantic and evolutionary stereotypes, Native
American history is currently one of the most exciting, dynamic, and contentious fields of inquiry
into America's past. This course introduces students to the key themes and trends in the history of
North America's indigenous peoples by taking an issues-oriented approach. We will cover material
ranging from the debate over the Native American population at the time of first European contact to
contemporary social and political struggles over casino gambling and land claims. The course stresses
the ongoing complexity and change in Native American societies and will emphasize the theme of Native
peoples' creative adaptations to historical change.
AIS 311 Social Movements
Social movements are collective efforts by relatively powerless groups of people to change society.
Social movements have occurred throughout history and the world, even under the most repressive
regimes. The intellectual rationale underlying the study of social movements is the belief that they
are an important source of social change. Social movements are typically conceptualized as non-(or
extra-) institutional political activity. That is, they are "politics by other means." In this course,
we will concentrate on twentieth century U.S. movements for social justice, including the
environmental justice movement, the American Indian (Red Power) movement, and the anti-globalization
movement.
AIS 333 Environmental Issues and Indigenous People
This course explores environmental perceptions and relationships held by indigenous people.
Interpretations of the relationships between Indians and nature will be examined through the concepts
of connective and holistic interrelationship, community, identity, and the sacredness of nature. These
concepts will be illustrated with specific legal cases, stories, individual perceptions, and current
environmental case studies.
AIS 340 Contested Terrain: Hawaii
This course draws from the fields of history, political science, and sociology to present an
historical understanding of contemporary Hawaiian society. Topics include Western contact,
establishment of Western institutions, overthrow of a sovereign government, annexation, integration
into the United States. Direct experience with Hawaiian leaders and institutions are incorporated to
address contemporary issues: sovereignty, economic development/dependency, social change, and land
use as a sociopolitical and cultural struggle.
AIS 348/ Iroquois Archaeology 648 (Course requirements differ at the 300 and 600
levels).
This course surveys the long-term development of Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) culture from an
archaeological perspective. Issues examined will include the geographic origins of the Iroquois;
material culture, settlement, and subsistence; the founding of the Iroquois Confederacy; Iroquois
responses to European -borne diseases, the fur trade, and territorial encroachment; the
practicalities of doing Indian archaeology in New York State and contemporary Haudenosaunee
perspectives on Archaeology. The Six Nations Iroquois will be emphasized with some material drawn
from surrounding Northern Iroquoian groups. Visits to local archaeological sites and museum
collections will supplement classroom instruction.
AIS 353 Anthropology of Colonialism
This course examines the relationship between colonialism and anthropology and the ways in which
the discipline has engaged this global process locally in North America. One of our aims in this
course is to gain an appreciation of colonialism both as a theory of political legitimacy and as
a set of governmental practices. As such, we will re-imagine North America in light of the colonial
project and its technologies of rules such as education, law, policy that worked to transform
indigenous notions of gender, property and territory. We will do so in order to appreciate the ways
in which these forms of knowledge and practice advanced the settlement of space and place and both
settled and unsettled peoples. This course will be comparative in scope but will be grounded within
the literature from Native North America.
AIS 386 Studies in U.S. Fiction after 1900: Contemporary American Indian Fiction of the
United States
This course will read a selection of contemporary U.S. American Indian fiction from both established
and emerging writers. The focus of the course will be the (post)colonial situation of Native
communities in the U.S., a situation created by the unique and contradictory position of U.S.
American Indians tribes as at once sovereign nations, U.S. dependencies, and, from the standpoint
of U.S. citizenship, communities fully integrated in the U.S.A. The writers we will read come from
a list that includes: Leslie Marmon Silko, Gerald Vizenor, James Welch, Linda Hogan, Diane Glancy,
Adrian Louis, Thomas King, Gordon Henry, Jr., Debra Magpie Earling, Anna Lee Walters, Charles H. Red
Corn, Craig Womack, Greg Sarris, Susan Power, Ray A. Young Bear, and Sherman Alexie.
AIS 404 Race and Ethnicity in Latin America
This seminar explores the historical production of "race" and ethnicity in the Latin American
context, beginning with the creation of "Indians" by European colonists and the introduction of
African slaves into already complex societies. The second half of the course will address
contemporary issues that stem from these colonial concerns: nationalism, the romantic invocation of
the indigenous past, cultural practices, land rights, political representation and enduring racism.
AIS 430 Native American Philosophies
This course will focus on Native American (Alaskan, Hawaiian, and Indian) thought from the
pre-invasion period (before 1492) to the present as it is contained in both oral narratives and
written texts (non-fiction, fiction, and poetry). The purpose of the course will be twofold. First,
to understand how and in what forms Native Americans from a range of cultures think about subject
matters in a range of areas: social, spiritual, legal, political, aesthetic, scientific,
environmental, and historical. Second, to ask how Native philosophies can help us answer the
following question: what is a just community? Narratives and texts will be taken from a list that
includes: Paul Zolbrod, trans. Diné bahanč: the Navajo Creation Story; Greg Sarris, Keeping Slug
Woman Alive: A Holistic Approach to American Indian Texts; Radin and Blowsnake, The Trickster ; Julie
Cruikshank, Angela Sidney, Kitty Smith and Annie Ned, Life Lived Like a Story; William Apess, A Son of
the Forest; Charles Eastman, The Soul of the Indian; Black Elk and Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks; Linda
Hogan, Power; Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony ; Haunani-Kay Trask, From a Native Daughter: Colonialism
and Sovereignty in Hawaii; Taiaiake Alfred, Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto;
Gerald Vizenor, Manifest Manners: Narratives on post-indian Survivance ; Winona LaDuke, All Our
Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life; Greg Cajete, Native Science: Natural Laws of
Interdependence; Vine Deloria, Jr. and Clifford M. Lytle, American Indians, American Justice; and
Wendy Rose, Bone. Permission of instructor required.
AIS 435/ Indigenous Peoples and Globalization 635 (Course requirements differ at the 400
and 600 levels)
This course will examine issues of globalization and how they affect indigenous people worldwide.
The processes of globalization, whether under the auspices of the World Trade Organization and
regional economic agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement or the
de-territorialization of social and political arrangement co- temporal with modernization, have had
profound social, cultural and economic impacts upon indigenous peoples. At issue are the lands,
resources, traditional knowledge, cultural property and tribal sovereignty of indigenous peoples.
In this course we will examine the multifarious and complex issues of impact of globalization on the
world's indigenous peoples, such as the effect of free trade and development on indigenous peoples;
issues of cultural 'property' such as songs and stories of native artists; intellectual property such
as plant medicines; the question of treaties and water rights; and whether and to what extent civil
society can truly include and address the interests of indigenous peoples.
AIS 472/ Historical Archaeology of Indigenous Peoples 772 (course requirements differ
between 400 and 700 levels)
This seminar uses archaeology to examine the responses of non-state indigenous peoples across the
world to European expansion and colonialism over the past 500 years. Archaeology provides a
perspective on indigenous lives that both supplements and challenges document-based histories. We will
assess the strengths and weaknesses of various theories of culture contact, and explore a series of
archaeological case studies, using examples primarily from North America with lesser emphasis on
Africa and the Pacific. The seminar provides a comparative perspective on indigenous-colonial
relationships, in particular exploring the hard-fought spaces of relative autonomy created and
sustained by indigenous peoples.
AIS 486 American Indian Women's Literature
This course will explore the development of women's literature in a number of different American
Indian cultures. We will attend to Native paradigms of cultural production such as women's song-making,
weaving, basket-making and storytelling, as well as the appropriation of European literary forms such
as the novel. We will read a diverse range of materials including novels, autobiography, poetry, drama
and short stories.
AIS 490 New World Encounters, 1500-1800
The discovery of the Americas, wrote Francisco Lopez de Gomara in 1552, was "the greatest event since
the creation of the world, excepting the Incarnation and Death of Him who created it." Five centuries
have not diminished either the overwhelming importance or the strangeness of the early encounter
between Europeans and the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Taking a comparative approach, this
course will conceptualize early American history as the product of reciprocal cultural encounters by
assessing the various experiences of Spanish, French, and English newcomers in different regions of
the Americas. Critical interpretation of primary source material will be emphasized in the course, as
will the development of students' ability to reflect critically on these documents, taking into account
the perspective of both the colonizers and the colonized.
AIS 497 Independent Study
Topic and credit hours to be mutually arranged between faculty and student. Independent Study Forms
must be approved by American Indian Program Office.
AIS 600 American Indian Studies
AIS 610 American Indian Studies Pro-seminar
AIS 671 Law and Literature in the Antebellum USA
AIS 726 Federal Indian Law: The Legal construction of Indian Country : interdisciplinary
approaches to Federal Indian Law
This is an interdisciplinary seminar open to both students in the Law School and the Graduate School
of Arts and Sciences. While its focus is the historic development of federal Indian law, it will
address fundamental theoretical issues such as the cultural limits of Western law, the situation of
indigenous peoples in a postcolonial context, and the critical relationship between law and
literature
