CENTER FOR NATIVE AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS RESEARCH

Popular culture is an arena in which Latin Americans make cultural offerings their own through creativity and reappropriation, and functions as a resource in the practices of everyday life. Pop culture forms can be key sites for the formation of identities, for the ways in which people make sense of the world, and understand their location within it. This course looks at a variety of pop culture forms from Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America, including music, dance, sport, television and film, social media, art, beauty, and consumer products. Taking an anthropological approach to this subject, we will interrogate the ways that pop culture draws from, comments upon, and at times resists political issues, notions of authenticity, social problems, and inequalities. In the context of Latin America, race, gender, and class are important conceptual frameworks from which to begin. In this course we will ask the following questions: How do understandings of gender, class, and race shape the ways they are represented and experienced in popular culture forms? Why are gender and race such frequent themes in popular culture? and How does comparison between different contexts enrich our understanding of the key concepts of this course? We will read both theoretical discussions of pop culture as well as ethnographic and historical examples, following these readings with careful discussion. Students will explore these relationships by way of individual research projects, culminating in both an academic paper as well as a creative project that translates the student's conclusions for an audience of non-academics. Students will leave the course with an increased understanding of the concepts of spectacle, popular politics, race/ethnicity, and gender/sexuality that exceed “normative” definitions, and the ways in which they articulate with discussions of popular culture representations and identifications.

Sexuality may be understood as desire, practice, or identity. In each of these conceptions, both cultural context and language play a key role. Linguistic anthropology offers important ways of understanding the concept of sexuality as related to phenomena such as globalization, politics, normativity, violence, intersectionality, and even the ways we think of sexuality in our everyday lives. Using ethnographic examples from the United States, Latin America, Africa, Oceania, and Asia, this course looks at homosexuality, heterosexuality, bisexuality, pansexuality, queerness, kink, polyamory, and other various understandings of sexual identities, practices, and desires. Students will engage with gender and queer theory, as well as learning methods of analysis from linguistic anthropology to understand the variation and meanings of sexuality in a comparative context.

This class involves the intersection of religion, law, cultural preservation, land management, and ethnoecology. We will focus on Native American sacred sites and cultural landscapes and their relationship to land, ceremony, history, and tribal/ethnic identity. Central to the class will be a focus on the sacred aspects of tribal identity and the role that landscape plays in the creation and maintenance of these identities. The class will cover laws pertaining to religious freedoms and how they are applied to Native and non-Native contexts throughout U.S. history, along with the histories and philosophies that have, and still influences these policies. 

The class will cover both Federal and Tribal management of sacred sites, ceremonial sites, and religious/spiritual traditions. Important to this discuss, will be the role of oral history in the preservation of culture and relationships to landscapes and how it has/is being utilized the U.S. legal system pertaining to Native American Tribes. The role of treaties and the conflicts that arise between Tribal/U.S. government to government relations and responsibilities will also be covered.

This will examine the exciting range of texts created by Indigenous writers from pictographs on birchbark to small newspaper presses, to award winning novels and video games. As we revise our understanding of "writing," we will also investigate how Indigenous people used writing as a form of creative expression and anti-colonial resistance. Read award-winning novels, learn about ground breaking video games, watch genre-shaping films and orient yourself in the literary landscape of Native Chicago.

This course introduces students to the social determinants of health influencing the broader health status and access to health care for Native American populations in the United States. Students will engage in a reading-intensive, discussion-based seminar, drawing upon research and scholarship from a variety of disciplines including public health, Native American and Indigenous Studies, anthropology, sociology, history, nursing, and medicine. Seminar topics will include infectious diseases and the Columbian Exchange, federal obligations to Native American people, community-based participatory research, and Indigenous health globally.

This course introduces students to the social determinants of health influencing the broader health status and access to health care for Native American populations in the United States. Students will engage in a reading-intensive, discussion-based seminar, drawing upon research and scholarship from a variety of disciplines including public health, Native American and Indigenous Studies, anthropology, sociology, history, nursing, and medicine. Seminar topics will include infectious diseases and the Columbian Exchange, federal obligations to Native American people, community-based participatory research, and Indigenous health globally.

Latina and Latino History History of Latinas/os in the United States and in the context of US–Latin American relations from the 18th century to the present. Taught with HISTORY 218; may not receive credit for both courses.

This course introduces students to historical, critical, and practical perspectives on international development. Through a combination of readings, lectures, speakers, case studies, written assignments, and presentations, students will learn about the history and practice of international development from its colonial foundations to its present dynamics. In addition, students will explore important issues such as the ethical dilemmas involved in doing development work, the challenges of measuring development, and the relationship between sustainability and development. To complement the historical and theoretical perspectives, students will examine mechanisms of economic, political, social, and cultural development, such as multilateral institutions, the private sector, and the nonprofit sector. This course offers students the unique opportunity to hear from thought leaders and practitioners working in various sectors of international development. Throughout the term, lunchtime receptions will be hosted immediately following class, allowing students to engage informally with class visitors.​

Note: applications and registration for this course have closed

 Since the so-called Age of Discovery, the Pacific has been conceptualized as a crossroads between the East and the West. By the twentieth century, places like Hawaiʻi came to be idealized as a harmonious multicultural society. This class examines how race and indigeneity are constructed within the Pacific using an interdisciplinary approach. Drawing from works within indigenous studies, ethnic studies, and critical race studies, students will address themes of sovereignty, settler colonialism, diaspora, and migration in order to interrogate and problematize the concept of the multicultural ‘melting pot’ across time. We focus on the impacts of U.S. plantation economies, militarism, and tourism in shaping the triangulation of indigenous, Black, and Asian groups in Hawai‘i and across the Pacific.

This course introduces students to historical, critical, and practical perspectives on international development. Through a combination of readings, lectures, speakers, case studies, written assignments, and presentations, students will learn about the history and practice of international development from its colonial foundations to its present dynamics. In addition, students will explore important issues such as the ethical dilemmas involved in doing development work, the challenges of measuring development, and the relationship between sustainability and development. To complement the historical and theoretical perspectives, students will examine mechanisms of economic, political, social, and cultural development, such as multilateral institutions, the private sector, and the nonprofit sector. This course offers students the unique opportunity to hear from thought leaders and practitioners working in various sectors of international development. Throughout the term, lunchtime receptions will be hosted immediately following class, allowing students to engage informally with class visitors.​

Northwestern University has identified diversity and inclusion as one of its teaching and learning objectives. In this class, we will generate multimedia content for an "Indigenous Tour of Northwestern." Students will research Native American people, places, policies and historical social movements that intersect with locations on the Northwestern campus. They will collect and digitize historical records, maps, newspaper and magazine accounts and generate new content in the form of video and audio interviews for use in a virtual reality tour (VR) and augmented reality (AR) walking tour of the Evanston campus. This unique digital humanities resource is intended to become a teaching and learning tool for faculty, staff, students, visitors and members of the Evanston community.

Northwestern University has identified diversity and inclusion as one of its teaching and learning objectives. In this class, we will generate multimedia content for an "Indigenous Tour of Northwestern." Students will research Native American people, places, policies and historical social movements that intersect with locations on the Northwestern campus. They will collect and digitize historical records, maps, newspaper and magazine accounts and generate new content in the form of video and audio interviews for use in a virtual reality tour (VR) and augmented reality (AR) walking tour of the Evanston campus. This unique digital humanities resource is intended to become a teaching and learning tool for faculty, staff, students, visitors and members of the Evanston community.

Environmental problems like deforestation, biodiversity loss, climate change, and ocean and marine resource degradation have emerged as some of the most intractable problems that society faces. They transcend international borders, are scientifically complex, and generally involve large sets of diverse actors and power dynamics from global to local scales. In this first year seminar we will examine how policies, actions, and behaviors impact the environment and how these politics of the environment play out on a global scale. This collaborative seminar will introduce students to the diverse ways in which different social science disciplines, epistemologies, and methodologies shape the ways in which we understand global environmental problems and solutions. While our primary assigned reading materials approach the topics through a political science lens, through individual research assignments and integrated peer assessments, students will be exposed to variety of approaches that will help us think about other ways of understanding a problem. By the end of the course, students will have a broad understanding of the nature of global environmental politics as well as specific knowledge related to a topic of their choosing.

This course examines Native American religious freedom in U.S. history. We will examine treaty rights, federal Indian policies, court cases, and acts meant to protect American Indian religions. The course will attend to the definitions of "religion" and "religious freedom" and consider historical and contemporary case studies related to the regulation of Indigenous

cultures and ceremonies. Counts toward Religion, Law, & Politics (RLP) Religious Studies concentration.

This course examines inequality in American society with an emphasis on race, class, and gender. Lectures emphasize the mechanisms through which inequality develops and comes to be seen as legitimate, natural, and desirable. We will also examine the economic, social, and political consequences of rising inequality. We will place special focus on poverty and inequality in Native North America.

The role that culture plays in the formation and reproduction of social classes. Class socialization, culture and class boundaries, class identities and class consciousness, culture and class action.

TBA.