These Fall 2021 courses focus on Native American and Indigenous Studies, or they contain a significant emphasis on Native American and Indigenous themes during part of the course.
Also look at: Emory Course Atlas. and our longer list of courses at that are frequently offered at Emory University
ANT 190 Life, Land & Place
TuTh 1-2:15pm
Dr. Debra Vidali
In this freshman seminar we will learn to listen and engage with a range of contemporary accounts about the connections between Life, Land & Place. We will do close readings of ethnographic, philosophical, fiction, and non-fiction works by scholars, writers, artists, and knowledge producers from a range of cultures, nations, and locations (including Dakota, Italy, Mohawk, Muscogee, Seneca, U.S, and Western Apache). Our main themes are people’s lives in relation to land, non-human species, the natural environment, care, and ethics.
ARTHIST 485RW/735R Ancient Maya Painted Ceramics
W 8:30-11:15am
Dr. Megan E. O’Neil
This seminar delves into ancient Maya painted ceramic vessels, examining their materials, painted images and texts, and archaeological and historical contexts. The class will include hands-on examination of ceramics in the Michael C. Carlos Museum and an introduction to materials analysis of ceramics, in order to combine understanding of the manufacture and use of ceramics with their artistic renderings and social contexts. This seminar also will address the historiography of ancient Maya ceramics and the history of collection and exhibition of these works. This is a combined upper-division undergraduate seminar and graduate seminar. The class will meet weekly in-person for one session and will have asynchronous reading and writing assignments.
ENG 101 (Section 10) Expository Writing: Native American Voices
TuTh 10:00-11:15am
Dr. Mandy Suhr-Sytsma
In this interdisciplinary writing course, we will read the 2019 non-fiction book An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People along with several short works of journalism, fiction, and film by Indigenous authors. In addition to readings, class activities, regular short writing assignments, and the portfolio/cover letter required in all first-year writing courses, students will complete three major projects: a rhetorical analysis of Native new media texts, a presentation/essay project based on focused research about one Indigenous nation, and a multimodal journalistic profile of a young Indigenous leader.
ENG 101 (Section 11) Expository Writing: Native American Voices
TuTh 11:30am-12:45pm
Dr. Mandy Suhr-Sytsma
In this interdisciplinary writing course, we will read the 2019 non-fiction book An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People along with several short works of journalism, fiction, and film by Indigenous authors. In addition to readings, class activities, regular short writing assignments, and the portfolio/cover letter required in all first-year writing courses, students will complete three major projects: a rhetorical analysis of Native new media texts, a presentation/essay project based on focused research about one Indigenous nation, and a multimodal journalistic profile of a young Indigenous leader.
ENG 356W/WGSS 385W Gender & Sexuality in Native American Literature
TuTh 1-2:15pm
Dr. Mandy Suhr-Sytsma
This course will focus on themes related to gender & sexuality in Native American literature. We will read texts by Louise Erdrich, Deborah Miranda, Tommy Pico, Craig Womack, Beth Brant, Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm, and others. Readings will include fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. We will also regularly engage Native news media sources. These texts will lead us to discuss issues of sexual violence, colonialism, and heteropatriarchy impacting Indigenous people. They will also draw our attention to positive experiences of Indigenous sexuality and gender expression. Course requirements include reading, participation in class discussion, informal writing assignments, a group presentation, one short paper, one long paper, a midterm, and a final exam.
HIST 285 (Section 5) Legal Histories of Native Peoples
(cross-listed as AMST 285/ANT 285)
TuTh 10:00-11:15am
Dr. Malinda Maynor Lowery
This course explores the histories of diverse Native American nations through the lens of both Native and European law from early times to the twenty-first century. We will study the relationship between law and a nation’s culture, and how the law both reflects society and structures society. Texts will include oral traditions, national constitutions, treaties, a novel, podcasts, images, and films, as well as a secondary text (Richotte’s Federal Indian Law and Policy). We will introduce you to the social and political organization of Native societies; concepts such as ethnocentricity, reciprocity, resistance, and sovereignty; the legacies of colonialism; citizenship in both tribal and U.S. contexts; and how Native people use the law to ensure their survival. We will discuss topics including: the relationship between tribes, states, and the federal government; race and racism; gender, marriage, and family life; political authority and conflict; and land and religion. This introductory course is ideal for anyone seeking to understand the challenges that Native people face today and how culture influences law.
HIST/LACS 360 History of Mexico
TuTh 11:30am-12:45pm
Dr. Yanna Yannakakis
This course is organized around different state formations across the sweep of Mexican history. We begin with the Aztec (Mexica) Triple Alliance, move on to the long colonial period, the federalism and constitutionalism of the first fifty years that followed Independence, to the Liberal reforms of the late nineteenth century, the Porfiriato, the Mexican Revolution and the rise of the PRI, the technocratic state of the post-war period, and finally the “narco-state” of the late ‘90’s through 2000’s. Our goal as a class will be to analyze how different social sectors within Mexican society – Indigenous communities (Nahua, Maya, Zapotec, and Mixtec to name a few), African-descent communities, women, working class, and peasant communities and organizations – interacted with the state, whether through negotiation, resistance, mass movements, rebellion, or revolution. Throughout, students will hone analytical and writing skills by interacting with primary documents that highlight the voices of these different groups, as well as visual sources like film, paintings, photographs, and political cartoons, and other kinds of sources like fiction, and journalism. We conclude the course with a focus on the disappearance of the 43 Indigenous student-teachers from the Ayotzinapa rural teacher’s school in 2014 at the hands of an alliance between state security and cartel forces. We use this event as a lens through which to discuss the “narco-state,” a concept that many scholars, journalists, and observers (Mexican, US, and international) apply as a framework to talk about “state capture” and the influence of cartels at various levels of the government. Major questions for the course include: How can we understand the relationship between state and society from a historical perspective? How do certain state forms, such as a “revolutionary state” or a “narco-state” emerge, and why do they endure or fail?
HLTH 250 Foundations of Global Health
Th 11:30am-12:45pm
Dr. Rachel Hall-Clifford
This interdisciplinary course explores the complex causes of serious health problems in both low-income and rich countries throughout the world, as well as strategies of health programs aimed at their solution. Global Health refers not only to the health problems of “others” living in far corners of the world but also to our own health problems as citizens of a very rich nation; most importantly it is about how those health problems are the result of global, social, economic and political interactions. A portion of the course will cover Indigenous health issues and traditional healing, particularly among the Maya people in Guatemala.
MUS 460RW North American Indigenous Music and Modernity
MW 4-5:15pm
Dr. Heidi Senungetuk
This course is an introduction to a diverse selection of Indigenous musics of North America. Particular attention will be paid to ways in which music articulates and shapes issues of tradition and modernity, place and identity, revitalization and resurgence, and sovereignty and self-determination. Ethnomusicological and interdisciplinary methods will be used to examine historical and social dynamics behind Indigenous musical and cultural arts in the 21st century.
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Here is a beginning list of courses that will be offered in Spring 2022
Please check back later for a fuller list!!!! Also take a look at: Emory Course Atlas. and our longer list of courses at that are frequently offered at Emory University
ENG 210W Major Authors: Louise Erdrich
Spring 2022
Dr. Mandy Suhr-Sytsma
ENG 381W Topics in Women’s Literature: Native American Women’s Literature
Spring 2022
Dr. Mandy Suhr-Sytsma
MUS 370W Indigenous Musics of the Arctic
Spring 2022
Dr. Heidi Senungetuk
PLEASE CHECK BACK. MORE COURSES WILL BE LISTED HERE SOON . . . .