NAIS 56 Indigenous North American Borderlands
This course focuses on the histories of Indigenous peoples in the borderlands of North America across time in both geographic and thematic contexts. Viewing Native America as an incredibly complex series of borderlands is a useful interpretive model for better understanding the history of Native peoples. Lectures, readings, and class discussion will focus on elements such as cultural contact, conquest and colonialism, missionization, citizenship, gender, and nation. While exploring these various themes, we will touch on some familiar territory such as frontiers and middle grounds, but we will also question our own personal, and often, region-based expertise in order to unpack a more nuanced view of Indigenous borderlands and their significance.