Concentration

Global Indigenous Studies Concentration

Director: Katrina Philips (History)

Global Indigenous Studies centers Indigenous Peoples' diverse histories and cultures, as well as arts, ecologies, economics, identities, knowledge, languages, literatures, music, politics, and religions. Indigenous Studies is inherently international: there are over 600 sovereign nations within the legal geographic bounds of the United States. Indigeneity itself is a global political formation, showing the linked histories that connect diverse peoples from many regions (including Africa, the Arctic, Asia, Oceania, as well as the Americas). Indigenous Studies is inherently interdisciplinary, finding expression in academic disciplines from across all divisions: arts, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences. 

Students completing a concentration in Global Indigenous Studies will enhance their capacity to consider how the experiences of Indigenous Peoples and Indigenous ways of knowing and doing have both been affected by colonialism and settler colonialism and how these experiences and ways of knowing provide understanding, insight, and belonging that transcend the colonial experiences. This capacity enables students to be meaningfully reflective on their place(s) in the world, paying particular attention to locations, powers and privileges of people, institutions, and practices.

Global Indigenous Studies Concentration

Structure of the Concentration

A concentration in Global Indigenous Studies requires six courses. These six courses must come from at least three different departments with no more than two courses from any single department. Students may not have more than two courses in common with another major, minor, or concentration that they complete. Students are encouraged to take classes that cover multiple geographic regions, chronological periods, and divisions. These courses could be derived from the list below or students may petition to have additional classes count toward the concentation, including up to one from study away, or an internship with approval of the director.

AMST 231 - Sovereignty Matters: Critical Indigeneity, Gender and Governance
AMST 237 - Environmental Justice
AMST 284 - Radical Reelism: Indigeneity, Politics, and Visual Culture
ANTH 251 - Politics of Memory in Latin America
ANTH 270 - Cultural Resource Management
ART 375 - Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Gender in American Art
BIOL 485 - Wildlife Conservation in the Anthropocene: An International Perspective
EDUC 240 - Race, Culture, and Ethnicity in Education
EDUC 380 - Research Methods for Education and Advocacy
ENVI 234 - U.S. Environmental History
GEOG 242 - Regional Geography of the US and Canada
HIST 222 - Imagining the American West
HIST 225 - Native History to 1871
HIST 226 - American Indian History since 1871
HIST 281 - The Andes: Landscape and Power
INTL 415 - Cultural Resistance and Survival: Indigenous and African Peoples in Early Spanish America
LATI 251 - Politics of Memory in Latin America
LING 206 - Endangered/Minority Languages
LING 225 - 100 Words for Snow: Language and Nature
SOCI 280 - Indigenous Peoples' Movements in Global Context
SPAN 316 - Mapping the New World: Exploration, Encounters, and Disasters

Topics courses (194/294/394/494) may also count toward the concentration with permission of the director.