Culture and Identity in American Literature:
Special Topic: Literature of the Southwest

Texts:
Native American Myths, Legends, and Tales (handout)
Cabeza de Vaca's La Relacion (handout-excerpts)
Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop
Rudolfo Anaya, Bless me, Ultima
Tony Hillerman, Sacred Clowns
Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
Contemporary Poetry Selections (handout)

In this course we will examine the fluid and complex ways cultural identity is defined, defended, challenged, suppressed, and enriched in the Southwest. It is an area which might aptly be described as a "contact zone," a social space where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination." We will look at ways Native American communities have been suppressed and transformed but also ways they have maintained their cultures. We will explore ways Spanish explorers and French missionaries forcefully impose their beliefs and values but are themselves altered in the process, forced to confront the narrowness of their vision of culture and identity, as they come to know Native American people. Finally we will explore ways later generations, Native American and Chicano, deal with issues of biculturalism or hybridity as they confront the truth that cultural "purity" is, and perhaps always has been, a myth. We will continually ask what individuals and communities mean by "culture" and "identity," and we will examine how these words and the social institutions that maintain them are alternately challenged and strengthened by the rich interaction of cultures that constitute the Southwest. In the course of our discussion we will consider some final questions which may connect our study of the Southwest to events of our own time and place. For example, what are the political, social, psychological and spiritual consequences-for ourselves and others-of failing to grant other cultures the same status as our own? And, at the same time, why is it important for all cultural groups to value their traditions but also to engage in self-critique?
Term Assignment, Attendance and Grading

I am asking you to complete one short writing assignment, answering any two of six questions. The assignment will be distributed on April 17 and collected on May 8. The assignment will ask you to reflect more deeply on some of the themes discussed in response to our readings and films. The questions will not require research but I will create a website with suggested areas for research that are related to our coursework. There will be some creative options in this assignment where you may, for example, create a dialogue across cultures or write a poem or a narrative in the "voice" of a particular culture. An annotated photo essay on a particular theme related to the course and our trip will also be an option.

Weekly Assignment Guide

Week I: March 13: Overview of the Course (all-day class)

Art Politics and Protest (morning class)
"Land of Enchantment"?: Cultural perceptions of New Mexico
New Mexico: some facts
The newness of the "eternal landscape"
The geology of northern New Mexico
Botany, wildlife and weather in the region
The Rio Grande at White Rock: the West and water
Thoughts on the epistemology of Native American life
Native Americans of the Southwest: from early settlers to latecomers
The lust for gold in an expanding world
Winning souls to God: the Spanish missionary impetus
The American West and the Cultural Imaginary
Settlers, displacement and "civilization"
Art and Cultures of the Southwest: a few preliminary points
Cultural crossings in New Mexico
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Cultural Identity in American Literature (afternoon class)
Major themes in the literature of the Southwest (overview)

Common theme in American exploration Literature:
· quest-physical and spiritual; individual, alone, isolated, in wilderness; triumph of spirit and of individual; wilderness itself something to be overcome. . .

· against this motif, literature of the Southwest offers some stark contrasts (spiritual connection to place, to community; anti-individualistic values) but also some striking variations on traditional themes (colonialism, hybridity, layering raise new questions about identity and defines "journey" or "quest" in more complicated ways)

Common Themes in Southwestern Literature
· sense of place, spirituality, connection, belonging, rootedness; struggle with different definitions of spiritual (Bless Me, Ultima)
· Omnipresence of spirituality; harmony, right relation; mindfulness; individual's and community's relationship to God, universe (contrast Native American literature with Death Comes for the Archbishop)
· Identity and splitting: dealing with hybridity; layering of cultures (compare protagonists in Bless Me, Ultima and Ceremony)
· Rebellion, departure, return; tradition vs synthesis; tradition and synthesis ( Cabeza de Vaca, Bless Me, Ultima, Ceremony)
· Reflection, loss, solitude, isolation, alienation; ongoing struggle to find "place", "identity"; ongoing negotiation of identity (Cabeza de Vaca, Sacred Clowns, Bless Me, Ultima, Ceremony)
· Trust and betrayal: physical, psychological, spiritual (see Cabeza de Vaca's record of Native Americans' insight-and his own-into betrayal of Spanish "slavers")
· Otherness and othering Colonialism and "orientalism": tendency to privilege Western (Spanish then Anglo) values; to see Native Americans (and Spanish) in paternalistic light (contrast Latour in Death Comes for the Archbishop to Tayo's struggle in Ceremony)

The sense of place-photographs and art landscapes of the southwest; selections from readings on "place" for group discussion

Cultural Identity in American Literature -2- Dr. van Slyck

Week II: March 20: Native American Myths, Legends, Tales (read handouts for class discussion)

Overview of Themes/Issues related to Native American Literature

Literatures of the Southwest and American literature; connections and differences
· individualism, discovery, domination
· community connection, respect, right relation
· oral tradition vs textualization: what is lost, what is privileged
· authoring: a cultural role with many assumptions
· "Do Indians write novels?" What constitutes literary value?
· Excerpt from Paula Gunn Allen

Tales and Legends for Week II
· Emergence (creation) stories and their function (Hopi and Zuni creation stories)-emphasis on maternal imagery: womb, reed, emergence place (shi pa pu), earth's navel (hole in roof of kiva; connection, nurture, return. . .(issue of layering: Christianized emergence stories); parallels and contrasts to Western tradition (Plato, Noah, Pandora; conceptions of evil, shame. . .)
· Cultural hero/trickster stories: marginal figures engaging in culturally unacceptable behavior; rebellion vs tradition; correctives to cultural self-satisfaction (Coyote stories)
· Women figures of power in matrilineal cultures: Corn Mother, Spider Woman
· Sexuality and the sacred (excerpt from Jesus/Corn Mothers)
· All kinds of tales (emergence, trickster, historical) show people aspiring to create harmony, right relation to universe

Screening: "Running on the Edge of the Rainbow" (Leslie Marmon Silko as a Laguna storyteller) 1978

Modern Connections to Original Emergence Tales
· Spiritual beliefs and practices: Roman Bitsuie's "Holy Wind and Natural Law," a discussion of Navajo's relation to land, land dispute with Hopi and religious persecution issue. (See page 128.))

Cultural Identity in American Literature -3- Dr. van Slyck

Week III: March 27:The Arrival of the Spanish

Readings: Selections from Cabeza de Vaca's La Relacion
Screening: Cabeza de Vaca
Discussion: Attitudes of Spanish in relation to own history (1492: Reconquest of Granada; expulsion of Moors; pureza de sangre
Selections from La Relacion
De Vaca's new identities and transformations: going native; internal/external changes he notices; sympathy, respect for Native Americans; rejection of Spanish values (slavery); boundaries of identity
Cabeza de Vaca and the tradition of American literature

Week IV: April 3: Death Comes for the Archbishop

Willa Cather; William Cather-biography
Bishop Lamy and Father Machebeuf-historical figures in the novel
References: role of Kit Carson, the Snake Ceremony, the Penitentes, Our Lady of Guadeloupe
Death Comes for the Archbishop:
Reader's connection to Father Latour
Reading the landscape: sacred space; space to be shaped
Relationship between Latour and Valliant (Cather sublimated?)
Man of action; man of contemplation
Latour's ideas about "nature" and "civilization"; repugnance towards native traditions; handling of wayward priests
Cather's and Latour's attitudes toward "Navajo hunters" (180-86)
Cather's attitude towards work of missionaries

Week V: April 10: Chicano Literature of the Southwest

Reading: Bless Me, Ultima; "La Llorona"
La Curandera and Witchcraft in the American Southwest (Simmons)
Bless Me, Ultima
· Tony's family and the two worlds of the novel (41; 52-55; 65-71)
· "El Puerto de la Luna" (90)
· Tony's cultural split: curanderismo, folk beliefs vs Christianity
· The "golden carp" (80; 113)
· Ultima and the synthesis of two worlds 121
Gloria Anzaldua and la mestiza; hybridity and identity: contemporary Chicano views of culture and identity
Cultural Identity in American Literature -4- Dr. van Slyck

Week VI: April 17: Screening: The Milagro Beanfield War

Week VII: April 24: Tony Hillerman's Sacred Clowns

Navajo traditions and values: emergence and place
Intercultural negotiations: Navajo/Hopi/Cheyenne
Stereotypes and misrepresentations: Cheyenne Autumn (140)
Intracultural issues: the Din'e clans, Jim Chee and Janet Pete (161)
Historical issues: Kit Carson and the Long March to Bosque Redondo
Kachinas and koshares (207)
History of the Lincoln Cane
Navajo justice vs bilagaani justice (316-22)

Week VIII: May 1: Ceremony

Leslie Marmon Silko-biographical notes~ (film screening)
Discussion of the novel:
"Ceremony"~poem: power of thought made word
Fluid boundaries of identity~physical and spiritual dimensions~awareness of loss of "self"
The structure of the narrative: time shifts; Anglo time/Native American time; kind of time needed for journey
"this fragile world" (35) what does this mean in Native American culture?
"It was Indian witchery that made white people in the first place" (132); function of retroactive prophecy
Traditionalism vs nativism: role of Betonie~incorporation of different cultures (examples)
Dialogism: mutivocality of narrative~present narration made intelligible through reference to earlier voice(s)
Synthesis and integration: implications of Tayo's journey

Tuesday May 7: Walking Tour: Museum of the American Indian and "New Mexico in New York" (lunch and possibly dinner)

Sunday May 12: Brunch at Brian's (155 Perry Street)~trip review

Week IX: May 15: Contemporary Native American and Chicano Poetry
Putting it all Together: Ideas about Identity, Multivocality, Hybridity,Tradition and Self-Critique in Literature of the Southwest