Course Information


Contact Information

Dr. Michael Witgen
Office: 3749 Haven Hall
Office Hours: Wednesdays 2:00-3:45 pm
Email: mwitgen@umich.edu

  

Class Meetings

Tuesday and Thursday 1:00-2:30 am

Room: 1448Mason Hall

Campus Map

 

 Please see Graded Assignments for instructions on weekly preparation and graded assignments.

 

Course Description

 

This course is an introduction to the history of the Native peoples of North America.  Instruction will focus on the idea that indigenous people in North America possess a shared history in terms of being forced to respond to European colonization, and the emergence of the modern nation-state.  Native peoples, however, possess their own distinct histories and culture.  In this sense their histories are uniquely multi-faceted rather than the experience of a singular racial group.  Accordingly, this course will offer a wide ranging survey of cultural encounters between Native peoples and European and Euro-American empires, taking into account the many different indigenous responses to colonization.  This course will also move beyond the usual stories of Indian-white relations that center either on narratives of conquest and assimilation, or stories of cultural persistence.  We will take on these issues, but we will also explore the significance of Native peoples to the formation of modern North America.  This will necessarily entail an examination of race formation, and a study of the evolution of social structures and categories such as nation, tribe, citizenship, and sovereignty.