ENGL 355 - Contemporary Native American Poetry

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

(Same as ANAS 355) In this course, we use Native American Studies frameworks to study and appreciate an array of contemporary North American Indigenous Poets. Through literary analysis and close reading, we consider how Native poetics pay serious attention to ideas of sovereignty, decolonization, healing, and intergenerational memory and continuance. Native American poetry is particularly vast and diverse, representing over 500 Indigenous nations in the northern hemisphere and written/spoken in both Indigenous languages and languages of conquest (English, Spanish, French). Because of this range, our goals for the class are to become acquainted with the various creative conversations, discourses, and theoretical debates within the robust field of Native American poetry and poetics. A Native American Studies framework positions the literature as the creative work of Native peoples, expressed on behalf of their respective Nations or communities and complicated by the on-going legacy of colonialism. Molly McGlennen.

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: CLS