ENGLISH 187ND: Indigenous Literatures of the Other-than-Human

ENGL 187ND: Indigenous Literatures of the Nonhuman

Class Times: Monday & Wednesday, 1:30-2:45 PM

Discussion Section Time: TBD

Room: TBD

Instructor: Christopher Pexa [he/him], Barker Center 263, cpexa@fas.harvard.edu 

Teaching Fellow: TBD 

Office Hours: Pexa: M 11:00 AM-noon, W 11:00 AM-noon or by appointment

TF: by appointment

Course description:

This course explores 20th- and 21st- century Indigenous literary depictions of other-than-human or nonhuman beings (including spirits, ghosts, plants, rocks, nonhuman animals, and Artificial Intelligence, among others) and Indigenous relationships with those beings. Our opening move will be to ask, “What might relationality look like beyond a subject-object framework?” As part of our answer to that question we will engage with ideas and hierarchies of life, animacy, and vibrancy, examining how these have historically inflected gender, sexuality, race, and Indigeneity. Last, we will highlight how forms of kinship with nonhuman beings are integral to Indigenous ways of understanding difference, to acting like a good relative, and to Indigenous practices of peoplehood. 

Course goals:

• A main goal of this lecture course is to gain a greater sense of the diverse, rich literary traditions of Indigenous peoples writing in, and/or being translated into, English across the world.
• Part of that process is to appreciate other positionalities—including but not limited to settler, immigrant, and African-descended—and to understand these in relation to your own lives, relatives, and histories.
• This lecture will explore how the term “Indigenous” intersects with the terms “Native American” and “American Indian,” which have their own distinct political legal and political histories in a US context, as do “Aboriginal,” “First Nations,” “Inuit,” and “Metis” in Canada.

Assignments and grading:

There will be weekly Canvas journals (11 total, with the option to skip one; 40% of overall grade) as well as a final in-class reflection (20% of overall grade) that will be a hybrid of short essay and quiz. The remainder of grading (40%) will be based on regular attendance and participation in class.

Required Texts:

• Damon Begay, Rezbot (available for in-library viewing at Tozzer Library)
• Louise Erdrich, The Sentence
• Stephen Graham Jones, Mapping the Interior
• Waubgeshig Rice, Moon of the Crusted Snow
• Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth
• Gerald Vizenor, Bearheart
• Joshua Whitehead, Full-Metal Indigiqueer

Note: these are the required full-length texts for the course. All others will be available as PDFs on Canvas.