Museumizing: "Science," Stories, and the Arts of Native Americans
AMST 303
Fall 2016 not offered
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Together we will focus on the roles of "science" and art in the production of Native American subjects. In particular, we will investigate the boundaries between art and science and how these boundaries are constituted, shored up, and reified in relation to the production of Native American subjects. We will approach science and art in their most expansive senses to follow their shifting frontiers and chart their multiple intersections. Our boundary-crossings will analyze ethnography, collecting practices, media, historiography, linguistics, as well as storytelling, sculpture, museum installation, and performance. In doing so, we will move from the culturally produced--museum produced--Native American subject to a form of indigeneity as praxis, and this will offer us ways to rethink traditions while both working with and refashioning the critical theories at hand. Our primary metaphor here is walking somewhere between the anthropological and the art museum. Seeking to interrogate the limits of and to limit the power of knowledge production, our critical walking will shed light on art, institutions, and the politics of "making Indians." |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS AMST |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: None |
Major Readings:
Course Reader includes:
Paul Chaat Smith, "A Place Called Irony" from EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT INDIANS IS WRONG
Friedrich Nietzsche, "On Truth and Lying in an Extra-Moral Sense"
N. Scott Momaday, "The Arrowmaker" from THE MAN MADE OF WORDS
Paula Gunn Allen, "Thus Spake Pocahontas" from OFF THE RESERVATIONS: REFLECTIONS ON BOUNDARY-BUSTING BORDER-CROSSING LOOSE CANONS
Marshall McLuhan, "The Medium is the Message" and "Radio: The Tribal Drum" from UNDERSTANDING MEDIA: THE EXTENSIONS OF MAN
Greg Sarris, "Storytelling in the Classroom" from KEEPING SLUG WOMAN ALIVE: A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO AMERICAN INDIAN TEXTS
Julie Cruikshank "Melting Glaciers and Emerging Histories in the Saint Elias Mountains"
Leslie Marmon Silko, STORYTELLER
Winona LaDuke, "Imperial Anthropology: The Ethics of Collecting" from RECOVERING THE SACRED: THE POWER OF NAMING AND CLAIMING
Cynthia Fowler, "Hybridity as a Strategy For Self-Determination in Contemporary American Indian Art"
James Clifford, "Objects and Selves" and "Indigenous Articulations"
Anna Dezeuze, "Assemblage, Bricolage, and the Practice of Everyday Life"
Gerald Vizenor, "Bone Courts: The Natural Rights of Tribal Bones" from CROSSBLOODS: BONE COURTS, BINGO, AND OTHER REPORTS
Marianne Constable, "What Voice is this?" from JUST SILENCE: THE LIMITS AND POSSIBILITIES OF MODERN LAW
Leanne Hinton, "California Indian Languages at Work and Play: Four Portraits" from FLUTES OF FIRE: ESSAYS ON CALIFORNIA INDIAN LANGUAGES
George Tinker, "The Stones Shall Cry Out: Consciousness, Rocks, and Indians"
Jessica Horton and Janet Berlo, "Beyond the Mirror: Indigenous Ecologies and 'New Materialisms' in Contemporary Art"
Paul Chaat Smith, "The Terrible Nearness of Distant Places: Making History at the National Museum of the American Indian"
Trinh T. Minh-ha, "L'Autre marche (The Other Walk)" and "L'Entree-musée: The World, with Each Step with Elvan Zabunyan" from D-PASSAGE: THE DIGITAL WAY
Jane Blocker, "James Luna Remembers Dino"
Eleanor Lebeau, "Trickster Plays: James Luna Performs Postindian Survivance at the 51st Venice Biennale"
Michael Taussig, "Violence and Resistance in the Americas: The Legacy of Conquest" from THE NERVOUS SYSTEM
Eric Michaels, BAD ABORIGINAL ART
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Examinations and Assignments:
3-4 short papers plus exercises and a journal. A significant portion of this course involves engaging with the materials beyond just accumulating knowledge, so participation will be weighted a bit more heavily than in an average course. The participation grade will include journal entries, contributions in class (including class and group discussions), responsiveness to fellow students' work in peer reviews, and writing exercises. |
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