Department of English

Native American literature (by which I mean works written or recited by American Indians) contributes crucial aesthetic, political, and historical perspectives to the literatures of the United States in the twentieth-century. After considering, through a reading of Paul Radin's classic The Trickster, the centrality of the oral tradition in forming this literature, this course will visit some significant highlights of twentieth-century U.S. American Indian literature in the genres of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Authors to be read will come from a list that includes: Mourning Dove, D'arcy McNickle, John Joseph Matthews, Black Elk, Ella Deloria, Vine Deloria, Jr., N.Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, James Welch, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Louise Erdrich, Wendy Rose, Luci Tapahonso, Simon Ortiz, Gerald Vizenor, Diane Glancy, Linda Hogan, Sherman Alexie, and Ray A. Young Bear.