Native Americans of the Northwest Coast: Views from within and without in early modern and contemporary texts

Optional course, Fall semester 2012 Course instructors: Ruxandra Rdulescu and Petrua Nidu Contact: radulescu.ruxandra@yahoo.com Class time and room: TBA Course description: This class will present students with an opportunity to explore a few key aspects of the Northwest Coast culture area in an attempt to provide an understanding of past and present concerns of indigenous communities. The class will be divided into two modules: the first module will investigate the view from without, based on representations of Native Americans as constructed by (mainly) British explorers, while the second module will help us make our way to the view from within by reading literature written by a number of indigenous writers from an autoethnographic perspective. The grading breakdown will be established by each instructor. For module II: 40% - class discussions of all assigned readings, 10% x 2 response papers, 40% - final research paper, with the possibility of bonus points for an online project. Assignment sheets will be provided in class for each assignment. Coursepacks will be provided by each instructor. Module I - instructor: Petrua Nidu 1. The New World in early modern maps. The limits of knowledge the limits of cartographic representation. Abraham Ortelius, Gerardus Mercator, Jodocus Hondius. 2. A case of dcouverte manque: the quest for the Northwest Passage. Humphrey Gilbert, Walter Raleigh, Martin Frobisher. 3. The myth of Virginia at the turn of the 16 th century: taming the other through representation. 4. The voyage westward: translating the other. 5. The New World and the reformation of knowledge: cartography, natural history and ethnography. 6. A problem of genre: travel literature and the representation of alterity. Primary texts 1. 2. Hakluyt, Richard, Voyages and Discoveries Smith, John, The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles: With the Names of the Adventurers, Planters, and Governours from Their First Beginning, Ano: 1584. To This Present 1624. With the Procedings of Those Severall Colonies and the Accidents That Befell Them in All Their Journyes and Discoveries. Also the Maps and Descriptions of All Those Countryes, Their Commodities, People, Government, Customes, and Religion Yet Knowne. Divided into Sixe Bookes. 3. Harriot, Thomas, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia: of the Commodities and of the Nature and Manners of the Naturall Inhabitants : Discouered b the English Colon There Seated by Sir Richard Greinuile Knight In the eere 1585 : Which Remained Vnder the Gouerenment of Twelue Monethes, At the Speciall Charge and Direction of the Honourable Sir Walter Raleigh Knight Lord Warden of the Stanneries Who therein Hath Beene Fauoured and Authorised b Her Maiestie and Her Letters Patents

Secondary bibliography Brotton, Jerry. The Renaissance Bazaar: From the Silk Road to Michaelangelo . Oxford University Press, 2003. Burke, Peter. O istorie sociala a cunoasterii. Institutul European, 2004 Campbell, Mary Baine. Wonder and Science: Imagining Worlds in Early Modern Europe. Cornell University Press, 1999. Campbell, Mary Baine. The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing 400-1600. Cornell University Press, 1988. Fuchs, Barbara. Mimesis and Empire. The New World, Islam, and European Identities . Cambridge University Press, 2004. Hadfield, Andrew. Literature, Travel, and Colonial Writing in the English Renaissance, 15451625. Oxford University Press, 2007. Harley, John Brian. The New Nature of Maps. Essays in the History of Cartography. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. [II. Maps, Knowledge and Power, III. Silences and Secrecy. The Hidden Agedna of Cartography in Early Modern Europe] Mancall, Peter. Hakluyt's Promise: An Elizabethan's Obsession for an English America. Yale University Press, 2007. Mancall, Peter. The Atlantic World and Virginia, 1550-1624. The University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Rubis, Joan-Pau. Futility in the New World: Narratives of Travel in Sixteenth-Century America in Js Elsner and Joan-Pau Rubis (eds.). Voyages & Visions. Towards a Cultural History of Travel. Reaktion Books, 1999. Module II instructor: Ruxandra Rdulescu 1. American Indians of the Pacific Northwest Coast a brief ethnographic overview. 2. Creation stories old and new: the raven, the bear and the salmon. Salmon tales of the Pacific Northwest, environmental justice and the dangers of corporate environmental neocolonialism. 3. Living on the "rez", Sheman Alexie-style: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. 4. Resistance and resurgence in the urban battlefield: Indian Killer (by Sherman Alexie). 5. Indigenous cosmopolitanism as a "war dance": Ten Little Indians and War Dances (by Sherman Alexie). 6. Identity constructions in the in-between: The Business of Fancydancing. Primary Texts Alexie, Sherman. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. New York: HarperPerennial, 1994. ---. Indian Killer. New York: Warner Books, 1996. ---. Ten Little Indians. New York: Grove Press, 2003. ---. War Dances. Grove Press, 2009. Roche, Judith and Meg McHutchinson, eds. First Fish, First People. Salmon Tales of the North Pacific Rim. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998. Suttles, Wayne and William Sturtevante, eds. Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 7: Northwest Coast.Smithsonian, 1990. (selections)