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English 5010  Contemporary Native American Literature

Section 001       CRN 94396
Ludlow
De/Colonial Poetics of Irony:  Contemporary Native American Literature   1530-1800 W

This graduate seminar will focus on the various ways postmodern Native American authors use irony simultaneously to describe and destabilize the systemic, on-going colonization of indigenous peoples in the U.S. Seminar participants will read and analyze novels, short fiction, drama, and poetry, including Hausman’s Riding the Trail of Tears (2011), Gansworth’s Mending Skins (2005), Glancy’s “The Women Who Loved House Trailers” (2002), and Mojica’s Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots (1991), among others. Critical contexts for our reading will include Deloria’s Custer Died for your Sins, Hutcheon’s Irony’s Edge, Vizenor’s Survivance, and student-generated information about each text’s tribal context.