In recent years, there has been a tremendous burst of theoretical and philosophical work loosely grouped together as “New Materialisms” or ‘the ontological turn”. After decades of focusing on the text, scholars in a wide range of disciplines, including philosophy, history, literature, and religious studies, have suddenly discovered things. In this course, we will explore some of the New Materialist and ontological theoretical literature, with a focus on how these ideas have been put into practice by ethnographers and archaeologists. Students will be encouraged to use insights from this literature to develop their own research practices.
ENG 374 Studies in Native American Literature: Native Chicago
The 2018 publication of Tommy Orange’s award-winning novel There There led some commentators to remark that the novel opened a new chapter in Native American literary history by taking place in a city rather than on a reservation. The novel shows that cities are not non-Native spaces but Native homelands that carry and contain kinship relations and histories. But literatures by Native people in cities are hardly a new phenomenon, as Native people have been engaging with and creating urbanity at least since the metropolitan cities known as Cahokia (near St. Louis), Etowah (in Georgia), Etzanoa (near Witchita, KS) and Tenochtitlan (Mexico City). This course focuses on Native American literatures from and about Chicago in order to examine how Native literature and art create, influence, and engage cities as Indigenous homelands. We’ll examine how Native writers used autobiographies, short stories, plays, poems, pamphlets, and scrapbooks to grapple with the questions raised by colonization, and we’ll read these texts alongside Native American and Indigenous Studies scholarship that will help us to examine how Native writers “remap” Chicago within Indigenous literary and artistic histories.
GBL_HLTH 320-1 Qualitative Research Methods in Global Health
This reading intensive course will provide a theoretical foundation and the skills central to qualitative methods for public health research. We will focus on developing and conducting focus groups and individual interviews. Course assignments will provide the opportunity to exercise these skills and those necessary to developing a research proposal, ethnographic field notes, and data collection tools. Further, students will learn the benefits and challenges associated with transcribing, managing, coding, analyzing, and presenting qualitative data. Central to this course is the ethical and methodological issues related to creating qualitative data with people through their stories.
GBL_HLTH 390-21 Community Based Participatory Research
Oftentimes we hear of research done on communities. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is a research paradigm that challenge researchers to conducted research with communities. In this reading intense discussion-based course, we will learn the historical and theoretical foundations, and the key principles of CBPR. Students will be introduced to methodological approaches to building community partnerships, research planning, and data sharing. Real-world applications of CBPR in health will be studied to illustrate the benefits and challenges. Further, this course will address culturally appropriate interventions, working with diverse communities, and ethical considerations in CBPR.
JOUR 367 Native American Environmental Issues and the Media
This course introduces students to Native American environmental issues, such as treaty-based hunting, fishing, and gathering rights; air and water quality issues; mining; land-to-trust issues; and sacred sites. We focus on how the media cover these issues and how that coverage contributes to the formation of public opinion and public policy. Students read and analyze newspaper and on-line news reports and view broadcast news stories and documentaries about Native environmental issues. We pay particular attention to tribal sovereignty, which often is at the cultural, political, and legal core of these disputes.
