Course Description:
What is indigeneity and how can it help us rethink gender and sexual non/normativity? In what ways current notions and identities such as queer and trans* are expansive yet reductive to approach the experiences of Indigenous and Native people?
This course critically explores Indigenous ways of knowing in the Americas in contrast to traditional views of gender and sexuality. By introducing and relying on decoloniality as a practice and form of analysis, the focus of this course will be two-fold: 1) We will analyze how contemporary understandings of gender and sexuality are contested by indigeneity across time, and how they operate within colonial processes and legacies; 2) We will focus on the ways scholars from Indigenous and Native Studies have theorized gender and sexual non-normativity in relation and in response to scholars in Queer and Trans Studies. As we move across several communities and geographical spaces, students will engage in tandem with primary and secondary sources including first person accounts, films, short literary texts, performance pieces, and historical, ethnographic, and theoretical works. Overall, students will develop skills in written, performance, and theoretical analysis while expanding their knowledge on gender and sexual minorities beyond western epistemologies.
