Anishinaabe Literature
Spring 2008
Instructor: Miriam Schacht
E-mail: schachtm@uwosh.edu
Office location: Radford 222
Office hours: Monday 2:30-5:30 and by appointment
Description:
This course focuses on Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) literature, both oral and written, and its relationship to Ojibwe history, culture, and politics. Anishinaabe stories and tribal histories form the framework for many contemporary authors’ stories and poems, and traditional stories are a literary form in their own right. We will discuss oral storytelling and, if possible, invite an Ojibwe storyteller to our class. We will also read selections from collections of traditional stories as well as from histories of the Anishinaabe people. Many early Anishinaabe writers published in this area, so this will also constitute an introduction to 19th-century texts. The class will also read texts from a range of contemporary authors in a variety of genres, and examine various critical approaches to these texts, and students will attend a reading and discussion by poets Heid Erdrich and Kimberly Blaeser. Finally, we will examine at the anthologies Sister Nations (2002; edited by Heid Erdrich) and skins: Contemporary Indigenous Writing (2000, edited by Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm) which are pantribal and internationalist in their approach.
Required Texts:
Jim Northrup, Rez Road Follies
Gerald Vizenor, The People Named the Chippewa
Basil Johnston, Ojibway Heritage
Heid Erdrich, Fishing for Myth
Kimberly Blaeser, Trailing You
Ignatia Broker, Night Flying Woman
Louise Erdrich, Four Souls
Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm, My Heart is a Stray Bullet
Mark Turcotte, Exploding Chippewas
Gerald Vizenor (ed.), Touchwood
Optional Text:
Thomas King (Cherokee), The Truth About Stories
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For more information on English department courses, the English major, etc., the department webpage is at http://www.english.uwosh.edu/
Updated Jan. 31, 2008