An expression coined in 1983 by critic Kenneth Lincoln, “Native American Renaissance” refers to an American Indian literary movement that came into existence following N. Scott Momaday’s receipt of the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for his novel House Made of Dawn. Momaday was not our first successful Native American writer – Indians had been publishing in the English language fairly continuously for the previous two centuries – but he was the first to receive a major American literary award. Since literary movements and awards do not happen in a historical vacuum, we should observe that the Native American Renaissance was happening at the same time as the “Red Power” Indian civil rights movement: a highly visible, sometimes notorious, and generally militant series of occupations of public spaces by young Indian activists. Although the two movements were rather different in both form and content, this class will read the Native American Renaissance literary movement in – and just as often against – the Red Power movement. Most of the literary texts we will study are modernist novels from the nineteen-sixties and seventies; they are aesthetically ambitious, artistically brilliant, and sometimes challenging. In addition to Momaday, our authors will include Leslie Marmon Silko, James Welch, and Gerald Vizenor.

This course satisfies the following English major/minor requirements: American Literature + Identity Difference

Course Requirements:

Students will produce short response papers and a major research project. No prior experience with Native American studies is required or expected.