ENGL 6670 - [The Construction of Indian Country in Law and Literature]

(crosslisted) AIIS 6670, AMST 6670

Fall or Spring. Next Offered: 2020-2021. 4 credits. Student option grading.

E. Cheyfitz.

This course analyzes the historical development of U.S. federal Indian law and its relation to American Indian literatures as a critical commentary on that law. As such, the course is generative for an understanding of (post)colonialism in the United States. We will study case law dealing with issues in the ongoing history of federal Indian law, which include sovereignty; criminal and civil jurisdiction; religious, cultural, and civil rights; and the legal parameters of Indian identity. Along with the case law, we will read literary, political, historical, ethnographic texts that will help us understand the fundamental cultural and political conflicts between Indians and Europeans embedded in the law, between kinship-based societies sharing communal land, and a society based in the twin structures of individualism and property.