Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Explore how the nationalist canon of English Canadian settler literature obscured Indigenous people as “real inhabitants of the land” as Margaret Atwood noted in Survival, her influential book. This course celebrates National Aboriginal Day on June 21, 2017 by collecting and studying one of the most neglected—and significant-- literary archives in English Canada. Learn why indigenous literature matters and its promise for Canada’s future from path-breaking indigenous writers directly. Students with credit for ENGL 226 may not take this course for further credit. Breadth-Humanities.

COURSE DETAILS:

Indigenous Writing since 1867: Once Neglected Now Celebrated will collect and study one of the most neglected literary archives in English Canada. Part of the reason why this archive has been ignored is because settlers used literature to consolidate a narrative of Canada that prioritized British-descended writers, resulting in university curricula that featured British and American canonical works. The 1960s produced a Canadian nationalist canon that Margaret Atwood noted, in her influential book, Survival, obscured Indigenous people as "real inhabitants of a land" (105). Although Atwood correctly identifies a persistent bias against Indigenous peoples as the first peoples of this land, it was not for another thirty years that Indigenous writers could readily find publishing opportunities. This course demonstrates that in spite of significant barriers, Indigenous people continued writing and circulating their literary works throughout the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. Particularly since the 1990s, as a result of Indigenous people’s loud and persistent collective action against the prejudices in the publishing world, their work has become increasingly visible, recognized and valued in the university and beyond. It is only recently that scholars and writers, such as The People and The Text Project, are systematically gathering the extraordinary archive of Indigenous writing of the past 150 years.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

- To learn why Indigenous literature matters and its promise for Canada’s future from path-breaking Indigenous writers directly.  
- To explore one of the most overlooked literary archives in English Canada.  
- To challenge the students to re-imagine the history of this land from a diverse range of Indigenous perspectives.

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: