Course Descriptions 2024-25
Fall Quarter Course Descriptions
ANTHRO 390-0-3: Indigenous Nations and Anthropology
Central to the constitution of the American anthropology were the Indigenous peoples of North America. This course considers the development of U.S. anthropology, which studied Indigenous peoples who simultaneously challenged, subverted, and undermined their treatment as subjects of study. We will consider the conditions in which anthropological knowledge was produced, its deployment in colonial and imperial projects, and how Indigenous peoples and nations have engaged and responded to such projects throughout time. In particular, we will focus on how Indigenous peoples and nations have retooled anthropology to revitalize their cultures and affirm their sovereignty, which includes finding ways to work with, within and outside of institutions of anthropological knowledge such as museums, archives, and universities.
ENVR-POL-390-0-23 – Land, Identity, and the Sacred: Native American Sacred Site Protection and Religious Rights
This class involves the intersection of religion, cultural preservation, ethnoecology, and law. We will focus on Native American concepts of the sacred, language, and how they create relationships 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.
GBL_HLTH 390-24-01 – 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.
Winter Quarter Course Descriptions
ENG 374 – Studies in Native American and Indigenous Literatures
The Laguna Pueblo writer Leslie Marmon Silko wrote in 1977 that stories are "all we have to fight off illness and death." 40 years later, in 2017, Orion Magazine published a cluster of poems written by Native writers "for the Water Protectors at Standing Rock." How, this course asks, have stories and poems been part of Indigenous protest movements and decolonial resistance? How have Indigenous writers used novels, newspapers, and films to document, critique, and refuse what Nick Estes calls settler colonial common sense?
This course examines the interrelated stories of Native American literatures & resistance movements from the Red Power activism of the 1960s-1970s to the water protectors at Standing Rock. We'll examine how writers like Louise Erdrich have used fiction to intervene in legal protections and policies for Indigenous women. We'll examine how speculative fiction and visual art imagine beyond a world shaped by colonialism and climate change. By pairing these literary texts with Indigenous Studies scholarship, we'll examine the different approaches Indigenous writers have taken to questions of sovereignty, environmental justice, legal jurisdiction, and political recognition.
GBL_HLTH 326/NAIS 326 – Native Health Systems and US Policy
In what is currently the USA, healthcare for Native populations is often experienced as a tension between settler colonial domination and Native nations upholding their Indigenous sovereignty. This reading-intensive, discussion-based seminar provides students with a complex and in-depth understanding of the historical and contemporary policies and systems created for, by, and in collaboration with Native nations.
HUM 370/HIST 300 – Indigenous Peoples and U.S Law
This course highlights the intricate relationship between Native nations and the U.S. legal system, with an emphasis on their status as sovereign nations, rather than simply racial or ethnic minorities. We will examine the historical development of tribal governments, U.S. laws and policies governing Indigenous affairs, Indigenous legal traditions, the European doctrine of discovery, diplomatic relations, treaty-making, and the constitutional foundations of federal Indian law. In addition, we will analyze key U.S. Supreme Court decisions, the growth of federal bureaucracy in Indian Country, the expansion of tribal authority in the 20th century, and municipal interactions with Native nations. The course will address contemporary relationships between Indigenous nations, federal and state governments, and the role of federal Indian law as both a colonial tool and a mechanism for Indigenous communities to protect their interests. Throughout the course, we will explore the legal and political challenges facing American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and Indigenous peoples in U.S. Territories.
Important: Course Descriptions will be updated as they are received by the NAIS program. Please always use CAESAR or email the instructor for in-depth course descriptions or syllabus.