What was life like for the ancient Maya people who inhabited what is now Central America? This course examines one of the best-known pre-Columbian civilizations in the New World: Ancient Maya civilization. The course will focus on the achievements of the ancient Maya - one of the most advanced civilizations in history - prior to the Spanish conquest in ca. 1500 AD. We will look at archaeology - from temples, cities, and hieroglyphic writing to farmers' homes and fields - to explore ancient Maya daily lives.
The course will begin with the words of the ancient Maya. We will read excerpts from the Popol Vuh, the Sacred Book of the Quich? Maya. We will then study and learn to decipher in a rudimentary fashion, the ancient Maya hieroglyphs, to gain insight into Maya beliefs, religion, and worldview. The course will then turn to archaeology's material record of buildings, temples, and artifacts to learn about aspects of ancient Maya life that were not written down and types of people, like everyday people, not recorded in written texts. Major topics will include the rise of ancient Maya civilization and the ancient Maya social, economic, and political systems, subsistence, and religion. The course concludes with an in- depth study of daily life in the ancient Maya world. We will explore what it was like to be a Maya farmer living in the small Maya farming community of Chan in Belize, and discover the lessons of sustainable lifestyles that we can learn from ancient Maya farmers.
Mary Weismantel MoWe 11:00AM-12:20PM Parkes Hall 222
ANTHRO 389-0-20 Ethnographic Methods and Analysis
This course is designed to prepare students to design and carry out an independent ethnographic research project. Students will complete several in-class and field exercises related to a collaborative ethnographic project, culminating in a final ethnographic report and oral presentation of findings. Weekly reading and listening assignments will complement fieldwork and form the basis for in-class discussions about ongoing research. Course activities center around the experience of collecting, analyzing, and presenting behavioral data using a variety of ethnographic techniques such as participant-observation, interviews, and more experimental methods
Roberto Rosado Ramirez MW 2:00PM-3:20PM Parkes Hall 223
ANTHRO 390-0-28 Nationalism and Archaeology in the Americas
What role has archaeology played in the emergence and consolidation of modern nation-states in the Americas? Across the world, states use monuments and archaeological artifacts to present national narratives in museums, ancient sites, and online platforms. In the Americas, nation-states have controlled who has access to the material remains from the past while transforming buildings, historic places, monuments, and artifacts into national patrimony. In the process of creating national patrimony, nation-states often estrange Indigenous communities from their landscapes and their cultural heritage. In this course, we will examine the role of archaeology in the creation and preservation of national identities in the Americas from the 18th century to the present. In weekly readings and discussions, we will learn about the institutionalization of archaeology as a state-sponsored discipline, the development of archaeological sites as national monuments and tourist destinations, the display and interpretation of artifacts in museums and heritage sites, and the monopolization of tangible cultural heritage by the state. Ultimately, we will evaluate the intersections of identity and politics throughout the history of Latin America.
ART_HIST 390-0-3 / HUM 370-6-10 Who is an Object?: Ancestors, Gods and Intermediaries
Formerly called primitive art and also known as the, Non-Western art is a geographically-expansive category connected by the histories of colonialism and imperialism that brought the art and artifacts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas into Western museums. In fact, many of the objects that comprise this canon are oftentimes not “objects” at all. Taking a decolonial approach to study the canon of Non-Western art, this course addresses the animacies and ontologies of different categories of “objects” in museum collections, including materially-embodied deities such as Katsina dolls (Hopi) and Orishas (Yoruba diaspora); ancestors that take form as seeds (Pueblo) and ceramics (Mimbres), and materials such as feathers (Aztec, Tupinamba, Hawaiian) and pipestone (Lakota, Dakota and Yankton Sioux) that mediate different realms of existence. The class will also consider the remains of humans, plants, and animals housed in anthropology and natural history museums. The question of objecthood also applies to people conceptualized as property, sold as commodities and displayed within ethnographic and World’s Fair contexts as well as the land upon which museums are built. We will learn about some of the ways that these “objects” entered into museums as we compare the Western epistemologies by which they are organized there to the indigenous ontologies they occupy within their cultures of origin.
ENVR_POL 390-0 - 23 Maple Syrup and Climate Change
As the earth's climate changes, maple trees and the maple syrup industry in the U.S. and Canada are being affected, in both good and bad ways. The class will cover these effects, their impact on Native American and non-Native communities, the maple syrup industry, and maple species themselves through articles and readings. This class is on site and will practice Northwestern's social distancing protocols. In the event of a Stay-at-Home Order, the course will meet via Zoom and we will adapt our field observations and sap collection accordingly. Students will work in groups, to collect data from three maple species on campus and examine sugar ratios, sap flow rates, and ambient temperature and precipitation. There will be a focus on species differentiation, soil science, and campus micro-climates. Students would also learn about how to utilize outdoor space as an informal science classroom and community science methods. The final product for the class would be a group data report. A copy of the report will go to facilities management to be added to their campus tree inventory.
Sara Cerne TuTh 12:30PM-1:50PM University Hall 101
ENVR_POL 390-0-26 Special Topics in Environmental Policy and Culture: Environmental Justice in Black & Indigenous W.Lit
While ecocriticism has not always considered the lived experience of women of color, literary texts by African American and Native American women have found ways of theorizing their own versions of environmental and spatial justice. Reading leading theorists like Rob Nixon and Edward Soja side by side with Jesmyn Ward's post-Katrina novel Salvage the Bones (2011), Toni Jensen's stories about oil and fracking on Indigenous lands, and poetry by Nikky Finney and Heid E. Erdrich, this class interrogates how literature can inform our understanding of environmental injustice and different types of violence. It grounds the discussion in a longer history of colonial extraction and Indigenous dispossession, racism, structural neglect, and ongoing residential segregation by discussing Zora Neale Hurston's 1937 hurricane novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and looking at Zitkala-?a's influential 1924 report on the settler defrauding of Osage Indians for their oil-rich lands.
ENVR_POL 390-0-27 LEC/ AMER_ST 310-0-30 SEM/ HUM 325-4-20 SEM
Joseph Whitson TuTh 11:00AM - 12:20PM Shepard Hall B08/B09
ENVR_POL 390-0-27 LEC/ AMER_ST 310-0-30 SEM/ HUM 325-4-20 SEM Parks and Pipeline: Indigenous Environmental Justice
This seminar explores how the relationship between the United States and Indigenous people has shaped the environments, ecosystems, and physical landscapes we live in today. Through engagement with a variety of digital resources including maps and digital media, we will learn how the environment of what is now the United States was managed by Indigenous people before and throughout colonization, how Indigenous people have been impacted by the environmental policies of the United States, and how Indigenous resistance and activism have shaped both the environmental movement in the U.S. as well as contemporary Indigenous political thought. In discussion, we will break down the politics, economics, and ethics of this history, challenging ourselves to think critically about the land we live on and its future. In lieu of a final paper, this course will include a digital, public-facing final assignment.
ENVR-POL 390 Land, Identity, and the Sacred: Native American Sacred Site Protection and Religious Rights
This class takes a multidisciplinary approach to examine Native American religion and philosophy which involves the intersections of anthropology, religious studies, cultural resource management and preservation, land management, and ethno-ecology. We will focus on Native American sacred sites and cultural landscapes and their relationship to land, ceremony, history, and 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 focus on specific regions and Native American communities and how the Sacred manifests within these communities and is enacted through ecological and economic relationships, cultural maintenance and preservation, language and philosophy, and land management principles. The course includes lectures and discussions based off of class readings.
Beatriz Reyes MW 12:30PM - 1:50PM University Hall 112
GBL_HLTH 390-0-22 Special Topics in Global Health: Native Nations, Healthcare Systems, and U.S. Policy
Healthcare for Native populations, in what is currently the U.S., is an entanglement of settler colonial domination and the active determination of Native nations to uphold their Indigenous sovereignty. This reading-intensive, discussion-based seminar will provide students with a complex and in-depth understanding of the historical and contemporary policies and systems created for and by Native nations. We will focus on the legal foundations of the trust responsibility and fiduciary obligation of the federal government outlined in the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court decisions. To gain a nuanced perspective, students will study notable federal policies including the Snyder Act, the Special Diabetes Programs for Indians, Violence Against Women Act, and Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). Additionally, state policy topics will include Medicaid expansion and tobacco cessation and prevention.
GBL_HLTH 390-21 Special Topics in Global Health: 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.
GBL-HLTH 390-0-24 Special Topics in Global Health: Native American Health Research and Prevention
Native nations in what is currently the United States are continuously seeking to understanding and undertake the best approaches to research and prevention with their communities. This course introduces students to the benefits and barriers to various approaches to addressing negative health outcomes and harnessing positive social determinants of health influencing broader health status. Important concepts to guide our understanding of these issues will include settler colonialism, colonialism, sovereignty, social determinants of health, asset-based perspectives, and decolonizing research. 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, sociology, history, and medicine. This course does not focus on nor teach traditional Native medicine or philosophies as those are not appropriate in this predominately non-Native environment.
HIST 102-6-22 First Year Seminar: Native Americans in Film
In 1893, Thomas Edison unveiled the kinetoscope and allowed audience members to glimpse the Hopi Snake Dance by peeking into the device's viewing window. Since the birth of the motion picture, films portraying Native Americans (often with non-Native actors in redface) have drawn upon earlier frontier mythology, art, literature, and Wild West performances. These depictions in film have embedded romanticized and stereotyped ideas about American Indians in the imaginations of audiences throughout the United States and around the world. In this course, we will critically examine representations of Native Americans in film, ranging from the origins of the motion picture industry to the works of contemporary Indigenous filmmakers. We will reflect upon revisionist narratives, the use of film as a form of activism, Indigenous aesthetics and storytelling techniques, reflexivity, and parody. Throughout the quarter, we will discuss ethnographic, documentary, and narrative films.
Hist 300 Red Power: Indigenous Resistance in the U.S. and Canada, 1887-Present
In 2016, thousands of Indigenous water protectors and their non-Native allies camped at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in an effort to block the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. That movement is part of a long history of Native activism. In this course, we will examine the individual and collective ways in which Indigenous people have resisted colonial domination in the U.S. and Canada since 1887. In addition to focusing on North America, we will also turn our attention to Hawai‘i and the U.S. territories. This course will highlight religious movements, intertribal organizations, key intellectual figures, student movements, armed standoffs, non-violent protest, and a variety of visions for Indigenous community self-determination.
HIST 300-0-22 Native America: American Indian History to 1763
In this course, we will explore how Native Americans shaped and responded to the major events in North America history in the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries, particularly the encounter between North America's Indigenous peoples and the European and African newcomers. We will analyze as much as possible from Indians' own perspective: their cultural, economic, and material engagement with the "new world" inaugurated by European colonialism. The primary aim of this course is to prepare each student to discuss verbally and in writing the major themes and problems of early American Indian history.
Tess Lanzarotta TuTh 12:30PM-1:50PM Harris Hall L05
HIST 393-0-20 Indigenous Health and Healing
This course examines the historical, political, economic, and social forces that have shaped the health of Indigenous peoples living within the borders of settler colonial states. This class interprets health and healing broadly and, as such, we will be considering histories of colonialism and state violence, struggles for sovereignty and self-governance, environmental justice, food and nutrition, biomedical research, and biopolitics in both reservation and urban settings. We will ask questions like: How have doctors and scientists and explained the health disparities that Indigenous peoples experience? How has medicine produced definitions of indigeneity? How have Indigenous healing practices persisted and transformed? Can medicine be decolonized and what role might it play in Indigenous sovereignty? In our effort to explore complex historiographical and methodological issues, we will be reading literature from a range of fields—including the history of science and medicine, Indigenous studies, anthropology, science and technology studies, Native American history, and environmental history—and discussing how scholars across disciplines have grappled with the complex relationships that exist between indigeneity, health, and settler colonialism. Finally, we will turn our analytical lens back on ourselves and consider the ethics and politics of various forms of historical inquiry.
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.
Reynaldo Morales Cardenas MoFr 10:00AM-11:50AM McCormick Foundation Ctr 2131
JOUR 367-0-20 Native American Environmental Issues and the Media
Native American Environmental Issues and the Media introduces students to indigenous issues, such as treaty-based hunting, fishing, and gathering rights; air and water quality issues; mining; land-to-trust issues; and sacred sites. These issues have contributed to tension between Native and non-Native communities and have become the subject of news reports, in both mainstream and tribal media. We will focus on how the media cover these issues and how that coverage contributes to the formation of public opinion and public policy. Students will read and analyze newspaper and on-line news reports and view and critique broadcast news stories and documentaries about Native environmental topics.
Caroline Egan TuTh 11:00AM-12:20PM Kresge Centennial Hall 2435
SPANISH 340-0-1 Colonial Latin American Literature
Major texts and writers of the early colonial period, including chronicles of discovery and conquest from both indigenous and Hispanic sources. Works by authors such as Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, Hernan Cortes, Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, Bartolome de las Casas, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, and Carlos de Siguenza y Gongora.
