English 4 - Winter, 2012

Critical Inquiry & Literature

Topic: Becoming Indian & Going Native in the Early Americas

Class Information

Instructor: Caison, Gina
CRN: 32459
Time: MW 10:00-11:50
Location: 201 Wellman

Description

This course will explore the literature of early colonial contact in the Americas. Beginning in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Europeans and Native Americans encountered each other throughout the hemisphere. Many of us are familiar with the history of colonialism depicted as an inevitable destruction of the New World when Native people were either killed by disease and war or assimilated into an imperial European society. This course challenges that narrative as we explore the literature produced and circulated on both sides of the Atlantic during the early colonial period. During this time, vast numbers of people around the globe became “Indians,” and despite prevalent narratives of Indian assimilation, many Europeans toyed with or embraced the idea of “going Native” when comparing their European society to those of the Americas. Thus, the history of colonialism was far from predestined, and Native people throughout the Americas staged (and continue to stage) significant military and ideological resistance against European imperialism.

We will also begin to see that our contemporary ideas of race and geography were by no means inevitable. Through much of the colonial period, writers considered the many ways that Europeans and Indians might become one and the same or remain irrevocably apart. By interrogating this early literature, we can become more knowledgeable and astute interpreters of the “New World” narratives that we encounter today as we examine contemporary representations of Native people alongside this early bicultural literature.

Texts

A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia., Thomas Harriot
The Tempest, Shakespeare, William
Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, de las Casas, Bartolome
Women's Indian Captivity Narratives, Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle, ed.
The Mayflower Papers: Selected Writings of Colonial New England, Philbrick, Nathaniel and Thomas, ed.
Early Native Literacies in New England: A Documentary and Critical Anthology, Boss, Kristina and Hilary Wyss, eds